


Sam's Angels

by VampireRose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Angel Fighting Rings, Angel Gabriel (Supernatural), Angel Wings, Angels as Pets (Supernatural), Castiel Has Flashbacks (Supernatural), Castiel Has Issues (Supernatural), Castiel Has Mental Health Issues (Supernatural), Castiel Has Nightmares (Supernatural), Castiel Has PTSD (Supernatural), Castiel Needs a Hug (Supernatural), Childhood Trauma, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gabriel Has Flashbacks (Supernatural), Gabriel Has Issues (Supernatural), Gabriel Has Mental Health Issues (Supernatural), Gabriel Has Nightmares (Supernatural), Gabriel Has PTSD (Supernatural), Gabriel Has Self-Esteem Issues (Supernatural), Gabriel Has Self-Worth Issues (Supernatural), Gabriel Needs a Hug (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Injured Sam Winchester, Lawyer Sam Winchester, Mechanic Bobby Singer, Mechanic Dean Winchester, Muteness, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Drug Use, Past Sexual Assault, Pet Castiel (Supernatural), Pet Gabriel (Supernatural), Phobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Selectively Mute Castiel (Supernatural), Sexual Assault, Sick Gabriel (Supernatural), Trauma, Traumatized Castiel (Supernatural), Traumatized Gabriel (Supernatural), Underage Drug Use, Veterinarian Ellen Harvelle, Winged Castiel (Supernatural), Winged Gabriel (Supernatural), Wingfic, Wings, Young Castiel (Supernatural), Young Gabriel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:55:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 23
Words: 133,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26170780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampireRose/pseuds/VampireRose
Summary: Dean hates angels. Not in a bigoted, racist way, they just creep him out. People with wings? That just shouldn't happen. They creep him out.Will that change when Sam asks his brother to watch his angels for a day?Angels Are Pets AU
Comments: 177
Kudos: 103





	1. Chapter 1

Dean pulled into his brother’s driveway, cutting off the rumbling engine to his beloved car. He sat for a few seconds, wondering how he’d gotten himself into this situation, before realizing that he couldn’t delay the inevitable- Sam needed to leave in an hour and had asked Dean for help.

Dean got out of his car, the door creaking as it opened and closed, and walked up to the house. Previously, he’d made fun of his brother for buying a house when it was just him living on his own. And being a lawyer, it wasn’t like he’d be around much to enjoy it. Now, the circumstances were different. 

Now, three beings lived in the house instead of one.

Dean wasn’t very clear on the details, but he knew the basics. Sam had somehow gotten his hands on two angels and, for some unfathomable reason, had decided to adopt and raise them. But, Dean supposed, that was Sam. Always doing the weirdest things. And it’s not like adopting or raising angels was  _ uncommon _ by any means, Dean just didn’t like angels. Neither had their father. Sam was different, though. 

Dean reached the door and knocked, waiting only a few seconds before his brother’s voice called something along the lines of “Just a second”.

True to his word, it was only a few moments before the door swung open, revealing Sam in a t-shirt and pajama pants, his hair somewhat messy.

“Hey, Dean,” He greeted, opening the door wider. "Come on in."

"Heya Sammy," Dean pulled his taller brother into a short hug and followed him to the kitchen. 

"Listen man, I'm really grateful for you helping me out on such short notice," Sam started. "You really didn't have to and I was getting desperate. You have no idea how much this means."

"It's nothing. You needed help, so I decided to help."

"No, but seriously. I know you're not a big fan of angels but you still offered to watch them. I mean, they're getting better about being alone and I would have been okay with leaving them today but Gabriel's been sick and-"

"Sam, stop. It's fine. Just tell me how I can take care of these things and what you need me to do so you can get dressed and go. Unless," Dean looked Sam over with a critical eye. "You're planning on talking to the AngeliCo CEO in your pajamas?"

Sam shot his brother a playful glare. "I have plenty of time to change before I leave, thank you."

"Yeah. So, where are the little monsters?" This was asked as Dean boosted himself to sit on the corner of the island, Sam rolling his eyes. 

"They're not awake yet, actually. They should be up in… Oh, about ten minutes. I need to start making breakfast, you want any?"

"Well, I don't eat breakfast, but if you want me to, I won't argue."

"I'll make extra then." 

Dean nodded his consent, watching as Sam got things out to make pancakes. 

“So what all do I need to do with them? You know, to keep ‘em from throwin’ fits or whatever.”

“They’re pretty low maintenance,” Sam replied, stirring batter. “Really just need to keep them occupied with toys and games until they get hungry. They tend to like natural foods, like produce, but Gabriel likes sugary stuff too. Candy and all that. You shouldn’t have to put up with too much noise. Castiel’s pretty nonverbal and Gabriel’s been sick, so he’s not been very talkative. Usually, on a good day, he’ll hold a conversation. I took him to a doc yesterday and got him medicine that he takes at mealtimes. He’s had a low fever and I’ve been giving him Tylenol for it every few hours. I wrote down instructions for everything I can think of, just to make it easier on you and to give you a reference so you don’t have to remember everything I say.”

As Sam flipped a pancake onto a plate, a thump came from the upper floor. 

“That’s one of them,” He murmured. “They’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Sure enough, as Sam was putting more batter on his electric griddle, the two small angels padded into the kitchen, one rubbing his eyes. They stopped when they saw Dean, the taller tawny-haired one nudging the other behind him, the feathers lining his wings fluffing up slightly.

“Gabriel, Castiel, this is my brother Dean. He’s going to be here today while I go out.”

“Hi,” Dean gave the two a small smile and wave, attempting to put them at ease. He could see their nervousness at facing someone they didn’t know. After a few seconds, the bigger one lifted his hand in an imitation of Dean, the smaller following suit. As Sam set down small plastic plates, the two hoisted themselves up on stools near the island. Dean could see that they each had one pancake, already cut up. Sam set a bottle of syrup near them and as he grabbed plastic forks that matched the plates, the bigger angel grabbed the bottle and upended it after flipping the lid open, drowning his pancake in syrup. 

“Not too much, Gabriel,” Sam scolded, taking the bottle. The angel pouted a bit but relinquished his hold on the sugary liquid, accepting the spork handed to him. Sam rested the back of his hand on the angel’s forehead and frowned a bit. 

“Still warm,” He muttered. “See if you can eat all that, yeah?”

A few minutes later, Sam put a plate of pancakes in front of Dean, who slid off the island and sat on the last stool. Both angels immediately looked up and bristled, their feathers puffing like a cat’s tail.

“Uh, Sam?”

He turned and looked at the situation, both angels glaring at his brother, their feathers fluffed up and wings spreading in an instinctive intimidation tactic. “Dean, stand up,” He ordered. Bewildered, he did so and after a few seconds, the angels folded their wings back up and focused back on their food.

“They’re territorial,” Sam told Dean. “All angels are. Those two don’t usually do that, especially for people they know, but they must see you as a threat.”

“What were they doing?”

“Intimidation tactic. It’s like a cat puffing up its tail or arching its back, they were trying to make themselves look bigger and scarier. That’s usually where I sit and they must have seen it like you were trying to take my place.”

“Weird,” Dean muttered. “So, how did you get them again? And which one’s which?”

“Gabriel is the older one with lighter hair that poured all the syrup on his pancake. Castiel is the little black-haired one. I owed Jody a favor and she called me up one night, begging me to take them. The shelter they were at was gonna euthanize them if Jody didn't find someone to adopt them in 36 hours. They were too feral and nobody wanted them. Jody cashed in that favor and I took the in. They've gotten a lot better since I got them. Still skinny, though.” He then moved to the fridge and opened it, leaning behind the door. “Do you want blueberries, strawberries, or cantaloupe?” He stood up, directing the question to all three of them. 

“I don’t really care,” Dean shrugged. Sam narrowed his eyes at him.

“How helpful.”

“S-strawberries,” Gabriel answered hoarsely with a cough afterward. He actually kept coughing, his tiny body shaking from the force of it all, until Sam offered him a small cup of water, helping him drink it with one hand on his back, just between his wings. Both Dean and Castiel watched with concerned looks as the young angel’s coughs slowed to a stop. 

A few minutes later, Sam gave the angels both small bowls of cut strawberries. Gabriel’s had some kind of powder dusted overtop. Castiel wriggled happily in his seat as he took his bowl and began picking out pieces to eat. The Winchester brothers watched them both with varying levels of affection. Sam then glanced up and had to excuse himself so he could get ready, leaving Dean alone in the kitchen with the two angels.

He froze, immediately unsure of what to do. Should he try to sit down in Sam’s stool and risk them doing their… Intimidation thing again? Should he just eat standing up? He decided to do that latter and did so quickly, finishing just as the angels were eating their last pieces of strawberry. As he waited for Sam to return, he decided to clean the dishes he’d used, knowing how much of a neat freak his brother was and how much the idea of dishes sitting in his sink all day would distract him. When he was about halfway finished, Sam reappeared, now dressed sharply in a navy suit.

“Alright, I’m about to head out, he announced, coming back into the kitchen where the angels had been sitting, watching Dean carefully. He pressed a hand to each angel’s head, ruffling up their hair a little. “Thank you again, Dean. Instructions are magnetic to the fridge.” With that, he left. Dean finished washing the dishes, taking the angels’ dishes as well and cleaning those. As he dried his hands, he read through the list that Sam had left. It wasn’t too complicated, explaining where the angels’ toys were and where Gabriel’s medicine was, along with instructions of how to administer it.

“Alright, I guess let’s do this,” Dean murmured, mostly to himself. “Uh, I’m gonna go sit down in the living room, if you want to come with me.”

Without waiting for a response- not that he expected one- he left to the living room, picking up his laptop from where he’d put it when he came in. After a few minutes, Gabriel’s tawny head appeared peeking around the wall, then he emerged fully, followed closely by Castiel. It seemed to Dean that Gabriel was protecting the younger angel. He remembered Sam saying at one point that the two were brothers.

When it became clear that Dean wasn’t interested in doing anything to the angels, they crept past him to go to their corner that was filled with plush blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. Dean watched them go and apathetically monitored their play, which seemed to consist of building the pillows and toys as high as they would go then knocking it back down. Eventually, they tired of this and flopped on their bellies, squeals of delight fading as they stared at each other.

Dean noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and shifted the top of his laptop to see Castiel struggling to get onto the couch. He soon succeeded though, and crawled over to Dean.

“Where’s your brother?” He asked, not expected much more of a response than a blank stare. He repressed a shudder as the little winged person got nearer to him.

With his fingers in his mouth, Castiel pointed to the corner where Dean could just see a mop of tawny hair and golden wings huddled near some blankets. After a few moments, it became evident that Gabriel was sleeping and bored, Castiel was looking to Dean for something to do.

Dean shifted his laptop back to its former position, figuring that if he really wanted something to do, maybe the angel would watch his screen. He resumed his game of solitaire and felt the little angel sit next to him. A shiver of disgust ran down his spine when he felt a wing brush his arm.

Dean wasn’t bigoted against angls, by any means. Definitely not like the extremist groups that would protest and riot and chant for angels to be muzzled, their wings clipped, even to be hunted to extinction. Some people saw them as trophy game, hunting wild angels to mount their wings on their walls. Others saw angels as mere pets, like purse chihuahuas, to be dressed up and shown off. Some saw the winged people as pests to be eradicated. A very, very small group of people thought of them as true people.

It was safe to say that neither Sam nor Dean were in any of these categories. Not yet, at least. Dean disliked angels in the way some might dislike cats or spiders. The wings creeped him out, how they looked like humans but could  _ fly _ . Anatomically, he knew, they shouldn’t be able to fly but somehow they could. Sure they had wings, but human physiology meant that they should be too heavy to get off the ground. Somehow, though, they could, and that’s what turned Dean away from them.

Sam, however, was fascinated by the creatures. He didn’t think of them as animals, because they could talk, communicate. They were intelligent, he knew, despite what the majority of the population thought. After, he’d taught Gabriel to read and Gabriel was teaching Castiel. They both had had a pretty good grasp of understanding English when he’d adopted them, he only had to teach them how to  _ speak _ it. He wasn’t really sure what his stance was on the creatures, but he knew that he strongly disagreed with them being hunted. What he didn’t know was whether he preferred that they be integrated into society as just humans with wings or if they should go to their own habitats and lifestyles, like wildlife, like they used to be.

Dean was snapped out of his thoughts when Castiel leaned forward and pointed to a red four and dragged his finger to a stack ending in a black five. Dean couldn’t believe he’d missed the move, but was more intrigued with how Castiel knew it was a good move. Had Sam taught him how to play Solitaire?

“How’d you know how to do that?”

Castiel looked up at him, four fingers jammed into his mouth, and shrugged. Intelligence glimmered deep in his blue eyes and Dean knew that the angel was smarter than his toddler-like looks would have one think.

Dean turned back to his game and after a few minutes, found himself stuck. He ran through every possibility he could think of and sat back, frustrated. He hated it when he got stuck. He glanced down as Castiel, who was squinting at the screen, obviously thinking. After a few moments, he hesitantly reached out and tapped out a move. Dean followed him and sat back after a few moves, astonished.

“How’d you know to do that?” He asked. “Dude, that was awesome.”

Castiel gave him a gummy smile around his slobbery fingers and wriggled happily, his wings fluttering. This time, though, he didn’t feel so repulsed by the feathers hitting his arm. How could he, when the source was something that cute?

_ Cute _ !? Where did that come from? Dean was a grown man, he didn’t use words like  _ cute _ !

He turned back to his game, once again, and tried to stop his thoughts. He didn’t like thinking sometimes, especially when it was subconscious, mind-running-wild thoughts. It got too loud if he let that happen.

Castiel pointed out another move and snapped Dean from his own thoughts, once again. This time, though, he became aware of another sound. It was breathy and wheezy and sick. He looked up, trying to find the source, internally groaning when he realized it was coming from Gabriel, still huddled in the corner. He set the laptop to the side and got up to check on the sick angel, trying to shove down the disgust rising in him. He was still a living creature that needed someone to take care of him.

Dean crouched next to the sick angel and paused for a second, his green eyes flickering over the shaking form. 

At some point, the angel had stripped of his shirt and was dressed only in a pair of jeans. His skin was covered in a sheen of sweat but he shivered, his face flushed from fever. He was coughing, but not the coughs from before. He sounded tired now, unable to draw a full breath to make the coughs effective. Come to think of it, he was starting to look a little blue…

Alarm coursing through Dean, he turned the angel over from lying to his stomach then pulled him into a sitting position. His head lolled forward then lifted, his eyes opening heavily, the whiskey color glazed from the fever and fatigue that came from his sickness. His wings fluttered weakly as he stared listlessly at Dean, his body still shaking from weak coughs.

“Oh, no, come here,” Dean sighed, picking the angel up and ignoring, to the best of his ability, the discomfort that came along with it. Gabriel clung to Dean’s shirt with weak fists, tucking his face into his neck automatically. Dean patted his back between the base of his wings as he took the limp angel to the kitchen. He set him on the island, noticing that Castiel had followed and was clambering up the stool to get onto the island. He glanced at the instructions Sam had left for information on what he should do. He knew Gabriel’s medicine was supposed to be taken at mealtimes but it had hardly been two hours since Sam left- it was only 11:20.

After debating with himself and watching Gabriel struggle for air, Dean ran his hands through his hair and pulled out his phone. He knew Sam was still driving- his interview was at 1 but the office was hours away. He quickly selected his brother’s contact and held the phone up to his ear, listening to the dial tone with one arm braced against the island, ready to catch Gabriel if he fell. The angel looked ready to topple over at any moment.

“ _ Dean? Why are you calling me? _ ” Sam’s voice caught Dean off guard- He hadn’t realized his brother had answered the phone. “ _ Is something wrong? _ ”

“Uh, yeah, you could say that.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“It’s Gabriel. I was sitting on the couch when he started like, wheezing. He’d been taking a nap in their blanket corner and then I heard it and I went to him and he’s sweating but shivering and his face is all red and Sam, he looks  _ awful _ . He couldn’t breathe, he was coughing so bad, and his lips looked like they were going blue so I picked him up and now we’re in the kitchen and he’s on the island but he’s still coughing and he looks like he’s gonna fall over and I can’t give him medicine till lunch you said.” Dean was fully aware he was rambling, but he needed to tell Sam what was going on. He didn’t want to fail his brother by letting his angel get horrifyingly sick, no matter how much their wings disgusted him.

“ _ Crap. Okay. How long has this been going on? _ ”

“Um… I think like, five minutes?”

“Crap _. Alright, in the cabinet by the fridge, bottom shelf, there’s a bunch of angel things. Treats, pill bottles, some of their papers, blah, blah. Behind the bottle that says Ropazin, that’s Gabriel’s medicine by the way, there should be an inhaler. Got it? _ ”

“Hold on…” Dean ruffled through the cabinet. “Yeah, got it.”

“ _ Alright, hold it up to Gabriel’s mouth. He knows how to use it but you’re going to need to help him. When it’s in his mouth, press down on it once and make sure he inhales the medicine. If, after about a minute, his coughing doesn’t settle, give him another hit. Don’t do more than three, he’s too little to handle that much. Three is gonna make him feel pretty nasty as it is. _ ”

“Yeah, thanks,” Dean grunted, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, one hand holding Gabriel’s head still, the other holding the inhaler up to his lips. Dean ended up giving the angel two puffs of the medicine before his coughing died away and his breathing eased. The poor angel looked exhausted when he was no longer fighting for air. He was slumped on the island, his palms flat against the surface, feet dangling off the edge. He was still flushed and feverish and shaking, but he could finally breathe.

“Okay, he can breathe but he’s still feverish.”

“ _ Thermometer in the cabinet, take his temperature. _ ”

“What’s a normal temp for angels, what’s a fever?”

“ _ They tend to run warmer than humans, that’s what the care books say. I think 104 is optimal, 107 or higher is a fever, and 113 is dangerous. There’s at least one book on their health in the living room if you want to check. _ ”

Dean hummed a response as he found the thermometer and battled with Gabriel to let him put it in his mouth. The sick angel eventually relented and opened his mouth, pouting. Dean stuck it under his tongue and he made a face but left it in.

“111,” Dean told him after the device beeped.

“ _ There’s baby Tylenol in the cabinet. He doesn’t like the liquid, I don’t blame him, so I give him a sippy cup of juice afterwards, then Castiel wants some too, if you’re prepared for that. _ ”

“I’ll give it to him, that’s really high and he looks miserable.” Over the phone, Dean heard an automated female voice say ‘In 500 feet, turn left’.

“ _ No I will not turn left into a road that clearly says dead end, _ ” Sam muttered in response. “ _ Stupid GPS _ .”

“Just get a new one,” Dean laughed as he found the Tylenol. “It’s not like you can’t afford it.”

“ _ Yeah, but this is the one you gave me _ .”

“Dude, I got you the cheapest, shittiest GPS I could find and that thing’s like 7 years old.”

“ _ Language, you have babies near you _ ,” Sam complained. “ _ Nice to know how much you care about me. _ ”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna let you go, I’m just about to give him the Tylenol.”

“ _ Alright. Thanks for watching them. Call me if you need anything else. _ ”

“Will do. See you, bitch _. _ ”

“ _ Jerk _ .”

Dean hung up the call and dropped his phone onto the counter then turned around with the baby Tylenol. Gabriel saw it and shook his head, mouth shut tightly.

“Come on, Gabriel, you need to take this,” Dean coaxed, noticing immediately that the baby angel was going to put up a fight no matter how bad he felt. “You’ll feel better, I promise. And I’ll give you juice. Does that sound good?” Gabriel merely stared at him with a sullen pout. Castiel was still sitting behind him, watching silently.

Dean eventually goaded Gabriel into taking the medicine with the promise of juice and soon enough, he was pouring two sippy cups, Sam’s prediction that Castiel would want some coming true.

“Alright, we’re done in here,” Dean grunted, sliding his hands under Gabriel’s arms and resting him on his hip. The feverish angel went limp, nuzzling his face against Dean’s shoulder. Castiel silently followed after sliding down the stool. 

Dean decided not to put Gabriel back in the blanket corner, opting instead to close his laptop and put it on the floor, settling on the couch while still holding the angel. He looked down to see that Gabriel had shifted and now rested his head against Dean’s collarbone, his eyes mostly closed. He was obviously falling asleep and Dean chose to accommodate this, shifting so he was lying down on the couch, Gabriel on his chest. The little angel’s breathing relaxed and Dean was pleased to find that he fell asleep within the next five minutes, his lips slightly parted, thumb creeping to his mouth. Dean patted his wings, surprised to find that his sin no longer crawled. Perhaps it was an effect of the shirtless angel sleeping on his chest.

Castiel struggled up onto the couch and crawled across Dean to Gabriel’s side. The older angel wasn’t straight on his chest, more on the side with Dean’s arm holding him steady. He shifted to pull his other arm free for Castiel to lay next to his brother. Dean wrapped his arm around the other angel, the little one soon falling asleep. 

A few hours later, Dean squirmed. He really,  _ really _ needed to pee, but he was pinned under the two sleeping toddlers. He eventually sat up with a groan and set them on the couch, promising that he’d be back and bolted to the bathroom. When he got back, the angels were blinking drowsily, leaning against each other. 

“Okay, it’s time for lunch,” Dean told them, checking the time on his phone. 2:45. “What do you guys want?”

Castiel merely stared at him while Gabriel yawned.

“Right,” Dean inwardly cursed himself. “Nonverbal.”

“Grill cheese?”

Dean looked at the tawny-haired angel in some surprise. He knew he could speak, but thought that he wouldn’t, considering how sick he was. “You want grilled cheese?”

The two nodded. 

“ ‘N apples!”

“Cool. I’ll go start making that, you two do.... Whatever it is you do.”

‘Whatever it is you do’ turned out to be following Dean and crawling onto their stools while they waited silently for him to make the sandwiches and cut apple slices.

After they ate, the angels bolted from the kitchen as Dean cleaned. Right when he finished, Catiel reappeared and tugged on his pant leg, pointing to the living room.

“You want me to follow you?” 

Nod.

“Okay, hold on.” Dean dried his hands and followed the angel to the living room. He went to sit on the couch, assuming they just didn’t want to be alone, but stopped when Castiel tugged his pants again and gave him a slight glare. Dean held up his hands in surrender and followed the angel to a shelf above their reach. His fingers returning to his mouth, Castiel pointed up. The problem with this was that everything was up and Dean had no clue what he wanted.

After a few comical (to Gabriel) minutes of miscommunication and not understanding, Dean eventually just picked Castiel up near his armpits, moving his head so he didn’t get a faceful of feathers, and waited for the angel to pick what he wanted. 

The board game Sorry.

Dean shrugged as he put the angel down, watching as he toddled to the hardwood part of the floor and began setting up the game as well as he could. He matched the game pieces to their colors just fine, but was a hot mess when it came to getting the cards right. He just lacked the coordination to pick them up well and his hands were way too small to hold the deck. Nonetheless, when it was set up as best he could, he turned and gave Gabriel and Dean a huge smile, his way of asking them to play with him. Gabriel understood easily and joined his brother, picking the green pieces. They then turned to Dean, who still didn’t understand.

“I… I don’t speak your silent ‘look at me’ language, guys,” He scoffed, shaking his head. “I’m only human, and a pretty crappy one at that.”

“Play,” Gabriel ordered, his voice hoarse from all the coughing he’d been doing. Dean, just as surprised when the angel spoke as the first time, blinked for a second before joining the youngsters on the floor, selecting the red pieces after Castiel chose blue.

Ultimately, Castiel won. Dean came in last, almost never getting a Move From Start card. He shrugged good-naturedly as he helped the two brothers pack the game back up. Castiel took the box and ran over to the shelf, giggling and kicking his feet when Dean scooped him up to help him put the game away. He reached for another one, whining when Dean pulled him out of reach.

“Does Gabriel want to pick a game?” He asked, glancing back to the older angel, who hesitated then nodded, padding over to the two. The shelf was above his head too, obviously designed to prevent the little ones from bonking their heads while still small. Dean paused for a second, unsure of how to proceed. He knew Castiel would complain the moment he was put down- the angel loved being picked up, as he had found out- but Gabriel needed to be able to see.

A decision made, Dean shifted Castiel to his hip, keeping him stable with one arm while bending down and scooping Gabriel up with the other. He balanced the angel on his hip, thankful that they were both light.Sure, he was muscular due to his work as a mechanic, but that didn’t mean he wanted to put heavy angels on his hips. 

Gabriel naturally wrapped one arm around Dean’s back as he looked at the games, pulling some of the adult’s shirt in his small fist. Eventually, he leaned forward and picked a puzzle. Dean leaned down and put both of them on the ground, releasing them to find a place to put the puzzle together. After declaring that it was too quiet with them not speaking, he put some music on, the volume low. It was one of Sam’s CDs. Dean had a feeling that they would prefer to listen to something familiar and he was right. Both seemed to perk up when the first song started and Dean joined them.

It was only a hundred-piece puzzle, so they had most of the edge finished by the time the seventh song rolled around. When the first notes started, the angels shared a glance and left the puzzle to perform some type of weird wiggle-dance that had them giggling barely a few seconds in. At the end, they joined Dean again, still giggling. Their wide grins brought a small smile to Dean’s face and he looked away to find the place for the piece he was holding.

By the time they finished, it was dinnertime. Dean made tomato rice soup, mostly for Gabriel’s benefit, and found some saltine crackers to go with it. Gabriel was noticeably perkier than he’d been before, but his skin was still flushed feverishly. Dean made him let him check his temperature and sighed in relief when it was 109. It was still a fever, but much farther away from any danger zone.

When the brothers finished, they slipped away, back into the living room. Dean glanced in while gathering dishes to see them throwing stuffed animals and pillows at each other, soft giggles floating over. Dean smiled at them then winced as he watched the black-haired angel topple over. Thankfully, he fell on top of a pillow so there was no need to worry about injuries.

By the time Dean came out from doing dishes Gabriel’s mood had pulled a complete 180. Instead of being energetic and playful, he was lying across the couch, staring listlessly ahead. He didn’t feel any warmer to Dean, so he supposed the little angel had worn himself out while playing.

Dean decided to lay down across the couch again, allowing the angels to scramble over him and find comfy spots to snuggle in. They’d just gotten comfortable when Dean’s phone rang. He didn’t have to move far to get it, he just had to grab it from the small table next to the couch.

“Hello?” 

“ _ Is this Dean Wincester speaking? _ ” A somewhat gruff voice spoke.

“Um, yes?”

“ _ Your brother, Samuel Winchester, has been in a car accident- _ ”

“He  _ what _ !?” Dean tensed up, fighting the urge to shoot to his feet. If he did, then there was a risk that he would send the angels flying and he was sure that was  _ not _ how they wanted to get airborne.

“ _ He has been in a car accident. _ ” The voice repeated calmly. “ _ You are his first emergency contact, so we needed to call you. He’s in a fairly critical condition. _ ”

“Okay, okay, um,” Now, Dean did sit up, carefully sitting the angels on the couch as he stood up to finger pen and paper. “Um, could you give me the address of the hospital you’re at? I’ll come see him right now, just tell me where I need to go.”

The operator at the other end of the line gave him the address, confirmed that he didn’t need anything, then hung up. Dean rose to his feet, rubbing at his eyes. 

“Alright, do you guys leave the house much?” Both angels kind of shrugged.

“Somewhat,” Gabriel forced out. His throat was really sore and he could hardly speak about a whisper.

“Alright, well uh, I would grab what you need, we need to get going soon. Um… Sam’s been in a car accident and we’re gonna go check on him.”

After having to calm down two panicking angels, fighting with Gabriel to put a shirt on, and figuring out where who would sit in the car, the three were finally on the road. Both angels were sitting in the front seat, wings folded but brushing as they stared at the scenery flying past. As they drove to the hospital, Dean noticed Gabriel looking worse and worse and by the time they parked, he was almost asleep again. Dean carried both of them in and went immediately to the front desk.

“I’m looking for Sam Winchester, he was in a car accident,” Dean told the lady behind the computer. Hands full of angel when she asked for ID and relationship, he put Castiel down. The little one immediately clung to his pant leg, staring wide-eyed at all the people around him, his wings folded tight.

“And the angels?”

“They’re his. I was watching them cause this one is sick and he didn’t want to leave them alone.” Gabriel made it very obvious he was sick at this point, his head resting again Dean and his chest shuddering with soft coughs. He looked just as miserable as before, especially when he turned his face to hide his eyes from the bright lights of the lobby. Dean was glad he’d thought to grab the angel’s medicines, which were in a bag slung over his shoulder along with some coloring books and crayons he’d found, just in case he needed to keep the angels occupied.

“Okay, he’s in room 137. I assume you know his condition? He may not be awake.”

“I know, I know, I just need to see him.”

“Good luck- Oh!” She reached forward, holding two lollipops. “Why don’t you give these to the angels?”

Dean accepted them and Gabriel reached for one. Dean unwrapped it and gave it to the angel, who popped it in his mouth and closed his eyes as the taste of sugar hit his tongue. Dean was hoping that the hard candy might soothe the little angel’s throat. When giving him some water just earlier, he’d seen him wincing as he swallowed and his voice, when he spoke, was so broken and painful sounding.

Castiel tugged on Dean’s pant leg and the man looked down at the little angel, whose fingers had found their way back to his mouth.

“Do you want the lollipop?” He asked. Castiel reached up, making grabby hands instead of replying.

“I know you want up, and I’ll pick you up, but you need to tell me if you want the lollipop because when I’m holding you, I can’t open it.”

Castiel thought for a second then nodded, accepting the lollipop when it was handed to him, a slight smile appearing on his face when he was scooped up.

With little trouble, Dean found room 137. Using the hand supporting Castiel, who had a better grip than his mostly-asleep brother, he knocked lightly on the door before turning the doorknob, taking a deep breath before entering the room.


	2. Chapter 2

The only occupants at the time were a doctor, a nurse, and Sam. The doctor and nurse were blocking Dean’s view of his brother, but they turned when he pushed the door open.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” The doctor asked.

“I’m Dean, Sam’s brother. Is he okay?”

“Why do you have angels?” The nurse asked, ignoring his question.

“They’re Sam’s, I was watching them for him cause he didn’t want them to be alone. Is he  _ okay _ ?” He repeated his question, this time more insistently. There was only one reason he was in this hospital, after all, and it was sitting in that bed he couldn’t see. Castiel squirmed in Dean’s arms. He could tell Sam was nearby. Gabriel didn’t move. He was too sick, with his constant shivering and sweating, he’d soaked his shirt. 

“Your brother is very injured,” The doctor replied. “He’s stable, but we just administered medicine to put him to sleep. You got here at a bad time.”

“It was the only time I could.” Dean snapped, his patience wearing thin. “Can I see him?”

“He’s doped up,” The nurse shot back, her attitude matching Dean’s. “He needs rest.”

“I need to see him and so do his angels,” Dean growled, straightening from his slightly slouched position. This paired with the dark glower on his face was thoroughly intimidating, enough to cause the nurse to swallow and take a step back.

“Dean?” Came a small, drowsy voice, so quiet that he almost didn’t hear. Castiel perked up and squirmed more, Dean holding him tight so he didn’t fall. Gabriel even looked up.

The doctor took the nurse by her elbow and gently pulled her to the side, revealing Sam. 

He looked awful.

His face was busted up, one eye swollen shut, his lip busted open. There was a line of stitches down his cheek. His arm was in a thick cast and Dean suspected there were more injuries he couldn’t see.

“He has a few broken ribs, lacerations along his face to chest, dislocated his shoulder but there was a lot of trauma to the muscles surrounding it, a concussion that doesn’t seem too bad right now, and a ruptured spleen. We had to remove it.” The doctor gave a brief overview of Sam’s injuries as Dean made his way to his brother. 

“Aw, man,” He sighed. “Dude, how did this happen?”

“I don’t know,” Sam mumbled. “I was on the way back from the interview, which went well by the way, when this guy just  _ rammed _ into the side of the car. I don’t remember if I was at an intersection, I don’t think I was.”

“Jeez, Sammy.”

“We won’t be releasing him for at least a few days, possibly closer to a week or more,” The doctor informed them. “We want to make sure the surgery didn’t have any unseen complication, and we’ll need to assess whether or not we need to do surgery to fix that shoulder.”

“Dean,” Sam’s eyelids drooped but he forced himself to stay awake. The medicine the nurse had given him was taking effect, but he was fighting it. “Dean, someone needs to take care of the angels.”

“I’ll do it, Sammy, it’s okay,” Dean reassured, though he wasn’t sure how much of a good idea that was. He hardly knew one thing about angels and he had to work! 

That wasn’t important, though. Anything for Sammy.

Castiel squirmed in Dean’s arms and reached for Sam. With a cautious glance at the doctor, Dean set him near Sam’s uninjured arm. Castiel shifted so Sam could wrap his arm around him and the tall brunet pressed a soft kiss to the little angel’s head.

“I’m okay, Castiel,” He murmured sleepily. “I’ll be okay.”

“Here, why don’t you tell Gabriel, too,” Dean suggested, crouching so Sam could reach up to the sick angel. At his owner’s touch, the sick child looked up, a pout on his lips and he reached to Sam as well. Dean set him near Sam’s hip, Castiel being in the way of everywhere else, and Sam dropped his hand to run his hand through the older angel’s hair. It usually curled up around his collar, but currently had more curl to it than usual. Sam gave the angel’s head a few soft pats as he drifted off to a medicated sleep. Castiel whined a little and tried to shake Sam to rouse him, obviously unsuccessful. As he got worked up by Sam’s sleep, Dean picked him up off the bed, not wanting to accidentally injure his brother. He pulled Castiel into a hug and bounced him, shushing the whining, crying child. This was the most noise he’d made since he and Dean met and the thought broke Dean’s heart that this was the reason the angel was making sounds. 

Dean shifted his gaze to Gabriel, who was pressed up against Sam, his entire body racked with shivers. Dismay filled the man and he laid a hand near the angel’s forehead, sighing nervously when he felt how hot he’d gotten.

“Alright, Castiel, stop your crying,” Dean told the angel after about a minute or so. “We’ve got stuff to do now.”

“No!” Castiel wailed, tears streaking down his red, blotchy cheeks. “Sammy!”

“I know, I know,” Dean shushed, trying to calm the sobbing angel so he could grab his brother. “I know you want Sammy. I want Sammy. But Sammy’s sick and he needs the doctors to fix him up. He asked me to take care of you like I did today but at my home instead of yours. Okay?”

Castiel shook his head, burying his face in Dean’s shoulder. “No!”

Dean found himself bouncing the angel, trying to at least get him calmer. Gabriel was still curled up with Sam, neither of them having stirred. Eventually, it seemed that Castiel’s tantrum had worn him out because he pushed his arms around Dean’s, letting his head flop against his chest.

“Alrighty then,” Dean sighed, scooping Gabriel up with little resistance. He set out to his car, his beloved  Impala , both angels in tow. When he got there, he set them down on the seat and looked at them.

Castiel was fast asleep, his cheeks blotchy and eyes puffy from crying. He had a frown etched into his face, but Dean figured it was from the tantrum. Gabriel was, as always, shivering, his cheeks still unhealthily flushed. Dean reached into the backseat and grabbed a flannel shirt he’d left and laid it over the two. Immediately, they clung to it, snuggling together. Dean nodded and got to his side of the car, driving to Sam’s house.

If he was going to take care of the angels while Sam was in the hospital, he needed to take them back to his place. Sam’s house was way too far from his job at the garage to be able to stay there, especially since there were city streets in between and the city traffic was always unpredictable. Dean preferred to use his route from his apartment, it was pretty reliable that there would be little traffic. 

Dean parked and looked at the angels. It was already dark outside and he figured that they had to be exhausted- it had been a busy day for them. Dean was. 

He got out and picked the two up, shifting them carefully so they’d be secure and not fall. He then took them inside, setting them carefully on the couch, then put his hands on his hips. He would have to wake one of them up for them to take what they needed, but which one? Gabriel was so sick he hardly responded to anything that was said and Castiel was so young that he might not grab everything.

His dilemma was solved for him when Gabriel began to stir. The little angel coughed a bit as he woke up, looking around to find himself in his home.

“Hey, Gabriel,” Dean crouched down with a soft, fake smile. “How do you feel?” He was rewarded with a shrug. He did notice, however, that the little angel’s eyes seemed clearer, more alert. Perhaps that meant he was feeling better.

“Do you feel better or worse than before?”

Instead of answering, Gabriel shifted forward so he was on his knees, reaching for one of Dean’s hands. When Dean complied in giving it to him, he pressed it against his head and Dean understood.

He wasn’t as warm as he’d been before, which was a relief. He was more lucid, too, finally doing more than sleeping or pressing himself against Dean.

“Can you say something?” 

Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head, looking away as though he were ashamed.

“That’s okay. Can you tell me why?”

The little angel pointed to his throat.

“Your throat hurts?” Nod. “I think I can help with that. Come with me, we can go look.”

Gabriel reached out for Dean to pick him up, which he did. Despite his feeling somewhat better, the little angel didn’t want to put the energy into walking. They left Castiel sleeping on the couch as they went into the kitchen and ruffled through the cabinet, finding nothing. In the bathroom, though, they were successful in finding a small red plastic bag. Dean grabbed it and was about to open it and give Gabriel one when he paused. He set the angel down on the counter of the sink and pulled out his phone, doing a quick search.

_ Can angels eat cough drops? _

He tapped on the first article, which was from the website of the biggest brand out there that made angel clothes, food, medicine, toys, and more: AngeliCo. It also happened to be the source of Sam’s interview. Dean was a bit fuzzy on the details, but it was something about some angel parent trying to sue them over some petty matter. The law firm Sam worked at was AngeliCo’s preferred, as they’d had to deal with cases like this in the past. This time, it was Sam’s turn to represent. The firm had never lost a case, mostly because it seemed that AngeliCo was, surprisingly, not a crooked, greedy company just out for money. Dean thought it was somewhat suspicious- no company that big was good, they were just good at covering their tracks. That’s what he thought, anyway, but despite this read the article. They did have good information apparently, and resolved to read up more on angels and angel laws. He wasn’t very well-versed in them, especially since before today, he’d never even thought he would be near any angels voluntarily. Now that he had two to take care of, he needed to know.

_ Cough drops are generally safe for angels, although some may be allergic to certain ingredients. Avoid brands with starch syrup, as angels have exhibited bad reactions. Should an angel present any of the following symptoms: burning of the mouth or tongue, involuntary crying, wheezing, or trouble breathing; remove the cough drop from your angel’s mouth and take to the nearest veterinarian immediately. These are signs of an allergic reaction. _

Dean turned the bag around and read the ingredients list, nodding when he saw that starch syrup was not one of the ingredients. He pulled a cough drop out and crouched in front of the angel, unwrapping it as he spoke.

“If you start feeling weird, in any way, you spit this out and come find me, understand? It’s very important that you do this.” His green eyes bored into Gabriel’s whiskey-colored ones. The little angel nodded and Dean handed him the cough drop. "Suck on it, okay? Let it dissolve in your mouth and it should help your throat feel better."

Gabriel nodded again and Dean picked him up, taking him back to the living room where Castiel was just waking up, rubbing his eyes. The two could never sleep well without the other. Dean sat Gabriel next to his brother then knelt in front of the pair. 

"Alright guys, Sam's hurt," He started. "And he asked me to take care of you. I agreed, but because I have work, we have to go to my apartment, which is closer to my job." He cut himself off with a sigh. "You probably have no idea what I'm saying. I'm going to need you guys to get together what you'll need. I don't know how long you're going to be at my home, so grab a couple changes of clothes and anything else you'll need. You got that?"

To his surprise, both angels nodded. Castiel slid off the couch and helped Gabriel down, then tugged Dean's sleeve to the stairs. The three made their way up, Dean picking Gabriel up at some point, and Castiel turned in to the door on the right. 

It was obviously a shared room. One side, the wall was green and the other was blue, the colors blended well in the middle. The floor had a car-themed rug between the beds with HotWheels cars sitting both on the road parts and not. Each half of the room had a dresser and both toddler-size beds were rumpled, the blankets pushed around in vaguely oval-like shapes. Dean set Gabriel down as he looked around. 

"Alright, get what you need together. Do you have bags?"

Castiel went over to the closet door and struggled to open it until Gabriel helped, standing on his toes. The brothers disappeared inside and reemerged with identical duffel bags almost as big as they were. 

"Alright. If you need my help, just get my attention."

Dean watched as the angels packed. They were obviously used to this and they were moving solemnly and efficiently. Dean didn’t realize something was wrong until Castiel dragged his duffel bag to his bed, picked up a bee plushie and looked up. He locked eyes with Gabriel and his filled with tears. He tried to hold them back, but was soon on the floor, trying to wipe them away with his small fists, sobbing. 

Dean bolted to the little angel’s side, totally lost about what was happening.

“Castiel? Castiel, what’s wrong?” He asked, feeling himself begin to panic. Gabriel was wrapping his brother in a hug, shushing him as well as he could. “Gabriel, what’s going on?”

“We’re leaving,” Gabriel rasped after a second, his voice hardly above a whisper. “We thought this time we would get to stay. We liked it here.”

“Liked it here- Wait.” Dean’s heart sank. “Don’t tell me you think you’re going back to the shelter?”

Gabriel nodded and Dean felt like cursing. 

“No. No, that’s not what’s going on at all. We’re just gonna stay at my home for a while and I don’t have things for you guys there. You’re just taking clothes and toys and things with you so you can stay with me. When Sam’s all better, you’ll get to go back with him. He just can’t take care of you guys. You’re not going back to the shelter. You’re not going back to that shelter ever,” 

Castiel looked up, his blue eyes watery. “S-stay?” He hiccuped. “With y-you?”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, relief coursing through him that Castiel was, firstly, speaking and secondly, understanding that he wasn't being taken away. "Yeah, you're gonna stay with me for some time."

Castiel sniffed, wiping at his face with his hands. Gabriel, who Dean hadn't realized left, reappeared with a beige cloth that he realized was a trench coat when Gabriel unfolded it and wrapped it around Castiel, who clung to it, wings fluttering. The dark feathers seemed to be in constant motion, especially in time of strong emotion for the young angel. Gabriel’s wings, by contrast, were almost always still, but this could have something to do with his being so sick.

“Alright,” Dean broke the silence after a few moments. “We gotta finish getting ready. It’s getting late and we have a fairly long drive ahead of us.”

Gabriel moved first, standing up and going back to his duffel bag, grabbing three plushies off his bed: A wolf, a horse, and a bear. He pushed them into his duffel bag which was then zipped up and dragged to rest next to Dean. After Castiel finished, doing the same, Dean stood up. 

"Do you want to take any blankets with you? I don't have many extra pillows or blankets, so you'll probably want some."

The silent angels each pulled a blanket and pillow from their beds and dragged them over. Dean took the rumpled blankets and folded them before putting them in the duffels as the brothers sat on the ground, staring up at him. Neither seemed too happy with the arrangement, but Dean couldn't blame then. They  _ were _ leaving their home, after all. 

Dean shouldered the bags and made his way downstairs, angels on his tail. He paused to go through the cabinet Sam used to hold the angels' medicine and grabbed Gabriel's Ropazin and Tylenol, the bag he'd taken to the hospital already holding the inhaler. He grabbed a few more things he knew he would need then went to the living room, where he'd left the little ones. He found them underneath the shelves that held board games and puzzles, kind of looking at each other and moving their wings. 

"What are you guys doing?" He asked them. They spun around and Castiel pointed to the shelves. "You want to take games?" Gabriel nodded and Dean made his way over and picked Castiel up. "You'll each pick two to take with you." He told them. 

Castiel chose Sorry and Twister while Gabriel picked Trouble and a thousand piece puzzle that hadn't been opened before. Dean had them carry the boxes and follow him out to the car while he carried their bags. Hands full, he had to leave the door open but planned to close and lock it before they left.

He opened the back door and hefted the bags in the helped the angels get their games in. He got them in the front seat and was about to close the door when Castiel’s eyes widened and he scrambled out of the car, running back to the house. Dean followed him, calling his confusion out. The little angel crawled up the stairs and Dean paused at the bottom, running his hands through his hair. He must have forgotten something. He turned and was about to go back and let the angel come out when he was done, but a couple books caught his eye. 

They were sitting on a self near the TV. Dean picked one up and read the title:  _ How to Care for Angels _ . He looked at the rest of them.  _ Caring for a Sick Angel, Raising your Angel,  _ and  _ Angel Laws. _ He picked them up and surveyed the rest of the shelves, grabbing all the angel books. If he was going to take care of these two, he might as well read up on them. He’d just finished when he heard thumping and turned to see Castiel clumsily coming down the stairs, carrying the oversize trench coat. He was tripping over it, his feet getting tangled, and almost fell down the stairs before Dean could get over to him and catch him. He carried the books under one arm and Castiel in the other, the angel clinging to the trench coat. He put the books in the back and set Castiel in the front seat with Gabriel, the older angel falling asleep again. He helped Castiel arrange the coat over the two like a blanket, and finally,  _ finally _ , left.

At some point in the forty minute drive, the angels fell asleep, Castiel leaning against the door and Gabriel leaning against Castiel. When he arrived at his apartment complex, Dean decided to leave them in the car and not wake them as he carried their things inside. He put the books in the bag with Gabriel’s medicines and tucked the games in the duffel bags, which still had quite a bit of room in them. He loaded up with all of their things and trooped inside, somehow opening his door, and dumping it all on the floor near his futon, which he pulled out into a bed. He grabbed the single pillow and blanket from behind it and tossed them on, having already decided that he’d let the angels share his bed. He pulled their blankets from their duffle bags and went to his room, tossing them on the bed before going out and picking them up. He carried them inside, hoping he wouldn’t get stopped.

“Winchester!” He groaned silently as he turned to face his neighbor. Of  _ course _ he’d be stopped the one day he  _ really _ didn’t want to. Naturally, it was Bela, a British girl he’d never really liked. “Are those  _ angels _ ?”

“My brother’s,” Dean answered gruffly, holding the sleeping little ones a bit tighter. “He was in a car crash and asked me to take care of them for a while.”

“Aw, is he okay?” Dean could tell Bela didn’t care about Sam’s condition as she stepped closer, she just wanted to see the angels. It wasn’t often you saw one on this floor of the apartment building. Most occupants were either too poor to own one or weren’t home enough to. She reached forward to poke one and Dean maneuvered them away. 

“He’ll be fine, just needs to recover-” He was cut off by a hoarse whimper. He looked down to see Gabriel staring up at him with a pout. He looked about ready to cry and Dean could tell why- the poor thing’s fever was so high he could feel the heat radiating through his clothes. “I need to go.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Bela asked. She was obviously not the type of person to care much about angels. Either that or she didn’t want to risk misgendering Gabriel, but Dean doubted that was the case.

“He’s sick,” He told her. “Needs rest. I’ll see you later.” With that, he left Bela alone in the hallway, hurrying to his apartment. When he got there, he closed and locked his door then sat Castiel in his bed, taking Gabriel out and sitting on the futon with the feverish angel, ruffling through his medicine bag for the Tylenol. When he found it, he pulled it out and Gabriel, upon seeing it, shuffled away, turning his head.

Dean struggled to get Gabriel to take the medicine, going from trying to convince him to holding his head still and basically forcing him to take it. By the end of it, his nerves were frayed and Gabriel was crying.

“I know you don’t like it,” He murmured, pulling the angel into his arms as he stood up, rocking him to try to calm him down. “But you have to take it so your fever goes down and you don’t feel so bad.” He wandered around the apartment, shushing the angel and trying to get him to sleep. He was struck with memories of doing the same with Sam when he was a baby. Granted, Dean was so little he couldn’t carry him well, but he’d still fought with his brother just like this to take medicine and hushed soothed him, eventually managing to get him to sleep.

Luckily, it worked fairly quickly. Gabriel was so sick that he was exhausted, despite his numerous naps that day, and going to the hospital to see Sam had taken a lot out of him. Dean tucked him into the bed next to Castiel, spreading the trench coat and their blankets over them to give the two some familiarity then went out to the futon, preparing himself for a late night as he opened the first Angel book.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean woke up the next day to a weight on his chest and arm and something tickling his nose. Confused, he tried to sit up but found that was a bad idea. He then opened his eyes.

Gabriel and Castiel had moved out to the futon at some point in the night and had settled on him. Castiel was on his arm and Gabriel was on his chest, wing slightly extended, feathers against Dean’s face. He contemplated getting up, but decided against disturbing the angels and instead rested his free hand against Gabriel’s back.

An hour later, they began to stir. A cough shuddered Gabriel’s body as he shifted, opening his eyes to meet Dean’s. Dean patted his back then decided to run his fingers through the feathers of his wings. He’d read the night before that most angels liked it. However, the moment his fingers barely touched the feathers, Gabriel tensed up,  _ hissed _ , and bolted. Dean sat up, ignoring Castiel’s quiet whines, and looked around for Gabriel, confused. He left Castiel on the futon and went searching for the angel, eventually finding him under the bed.

“Hey, Gabriel,” He spoke softly, not wanting to upset the angel. His eyes were reflecting light, like a cat’s, and his hunched position made him look like a gremlin, especially with his wings flared the way they were, hardly opened. “What happened? What’s wrong?” He reached a hand towards the angel as though he were a frightened kitten, only to pull back when he hissed again and tried to scratch at him. His nails were too dull, though, and didn’t do any damage, but Dean got the message.

_ Leave me alone _ .

He stood up and walked away, slightly spooked by the low growl that followed him out the room. When he returned to the futon, Castiel was sitting up, watching curiously.

“Hey, kid,” Dean greeted. Castiel hesitated, then gave him a small wave. “Any idea what’s up with your brother?”

Castiel’s eyes shifted from his momentarily, then returned. He shook his wings then pointed to them. He then shook his head.

“I don’t get it.” 

He huffed a sigh and wrapped a wing over his shoulder. He pressed a hand against the thick feathers and shook his head. He removed his hand and nodded. He did this a few times.

“Does he not like having his wings touched?”

Castiel nodded vigorously, making wide motions Dean didn’t understand.

“Uh, well, I’m gonna make you two breakfast. I don’t have much, is cereal okay?” Castiel nodded and watched Dean go into the kitchen. He returned with two bowls.

“Are you okay to take one?” Castiel nodded, holding his hands out for the bowl. Dean gave him the bowl closer to his body and, unprepared for the weight of a bowl full of cereal and milk, it slipped through his small hands, bounced against his lap, and clattered to the floor, spilling the milk and cereal all over. Castiel flinched a bit and gazed up fearfully at Dean, his wings moving to shroud his body and his arm coming up to hide his face.

“Wh- What are you doing?” Dean asked. Castiel seemed to have shrunk in on himself, trying to appear smaller than he already was. He looked like he expected DEan to hurt him. “It’s not a big deal, we just need to clean it up.”

He grabbed a towel and showed Castiel how to wipe up a mess. Either Sam had never let them watch to clean up or they’d never made a mess.

“See? All cleaned up,” Dean told the angel as he put the bowl in the sink. “Now all we gotta do is get  _ you _ cleaned up.” He picked the little one up and carried him to the bathroom, setting him on the toilet and starting the faucet to fill the tub after pulling off the angel’s milk-soaked clothes. Apparently, it was the angel’s preferred method of cleaning them, according to the books. As the tub filled, though, Castiel edged away from it until he hit the door. He tried to reach the doorknob, but was still too small.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Dean turned to grab Castiel, frowning when he saw that the angel was cowering against the wall. He picked him up, surprised by his struggling, but nothing stunned him more than when he tried to get the angel into the water.

The little creature, noverbal as he was, actually  _ screamed _ . He’d turned and was clinging to one of Dean’s arms, his claws digging into his skin, almost piercing it. His wings were spread as big as they would go and he was actually  _ crying _ , too. 

“No!” He wailed as Dean took him away from the tub. Dean set the tub to drain and held the angel on his leg.

“Well, I gotta get you cleaned up somehow,” He muttered to the trembling angel. He was shocked at his reaction. It was only water. “You’re covered in milk and you’ll stink if I don’t wash it off.”

Castiel had buried his face in Dean’s chest and the man rested his hand against the baby’s head. He patted his head as his body shook with sobs. This time, he let the angel cry instead of telling him to stop. It took about fifteen minutes for him to calm down and pull away from Dean a bit.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked. Castiel hesitated then nodded, but Dean could see unshed tears lingering in the face. “Alright, well, how are we gonna get you cleaned up?”

Castiel thought for a second then turned towards the tub. He pointed upward and looked at Dean, who was trying to follow his finger.

“Rain,” He spoke simply. Dean finally understood that he was opting to use the showerhead. He shrugged and turned it on, one hand under the water to feel the temperature. Castiel flinched a little at the sound of the shower turning on, but recovered quickly. Dean helped him into the tub and when he was about to pull his hand back, Castiel caught his wrist.

“Help?” He asked timidly. Dean sighed then nodded, grabbing his soap.

The shower was a short affair, Dean not wanting to spend any longer than he had to bathing an angel. Whenhe finished, he pulled the angel out and rubbed him dry with a towel, ordering him to stay put while he grabbed clothes. After he was dressed, Dean took him to the futon, sitting him down and finding a banana. He then dialed a phone number he hadn't called in way too long. 

“ _ Hello? _ ”

“Hey, Jody, it’s Dean.”

“ _ Hey, Dean. It’s been a while, what’s up?” _

“Uh, a lot actually, You remember those angels you had Sam take care of?”

“ _ Of course I do. Why, what’s wrong? _ ”

“Well, Gabriel’s sick, but that’s not what I called about. Sam was in a crash yesterday and asked me to take care of them while he can’t and I have questions about their behavior. Sam mentioned he got them from you and, uh, I was wondering about the circumstances of how you got ahold of them. They’re… It’s really weird.”

“ _ Go on _ .”

“Well, I read that angels liked their wings being touched but when I tried it with Gabriel, he hissed and ran away and hid under my bed. I tried to reach out to him but he tried to scratch me and growled so I backed off. Um… Then Castiel ended up spilling cereal on himself so I had to get him cleaned up b

ut when I tried to get him in the tub, he started screaming and crying. I eventually got him cleaned up by using the showerhead, but I just found it really weird. Is that normal or is it just specific to these two?”

“ _ That’s… Those two have a very complicated history. If you’d like to come in to the station, I’ll explain what happened. _ ”

“Alright. I’ll have to bring them with me, Sam doesn’t want Gabriel to be alone since he’s so sick. It’ll probably take a while to lure him out for me to be able to bring him, but I’ll try to come in today. Does that work?”

“ _ Yeah. Gabriel really likes sweets, so if you have candy, that’ll help. _ ”

“Okay. I’ll see you, Jody.”

“ _ See you, Dean. Bye. _ ”

“ _ Bye. _ ”

Dean hung up and put the phone down, looking at Castiel, who had finished his banana. 

“Well, looks like we’re going out at some point today. Wonder if I have any candy…” With that, he stood up and moved to the kitchen. After a second, Castiel slid off the futon, leaving his banana peel behind, and padded into the bedroom, crawling under the bed to be with his feverish brother. He could feel him shaking and pressed against him, his dark wings opening to wrap around him. The two sat in the strange embrace until Dean’s footsteps could be heard coming nearer. Gabriel crouched closer to the ground with a hiss, his eyes narrowing. Soon, Dean crouched down so his face could be seen.

“Hey, Gabriel,” He whispered. “Hey, I’m sorry about touching your wings, okay? Here, I have something for you.” He opened his hand to reveal a lollipop. Gabriel lifted his head a bit and crept forward, but backed off with a his when Dean slid his hand under the bed. When he stilled again, Gabriel leaned forward to sniff his hand cautiously. After a few seconds, he crawled closer. Dean felt a flicker of hope that he was going to come out, but that was squashed when he grabbed the lollipop and backed away pressing himself against the wall as he unwrapped the candy.

“I have more out here,” Dean murmured. “You need your medicine, too, and I have to make sure your fever isn’t too high. Since it’s hard candy, it should help your throat just a little. If you want more, you have to come out to me.”

When Gabriel didn’t reply, Dean settled to lay on his stomach, watching the angels. Castiel merely sat, watching his brother, wings twitching. Gabriel was crouching, lollipop in both hands, carefully tasting it. Castiel could feel small thrills running through his brother's body every taste of the sugar he got and secretly wanted some as well. Sugar made them happy. 

Eventually, Gabriel crept forward, slightly closer to Dean, lollipop hanging from his lips. Castiel followed right behind him, carefully gauging the older people’s reactions. Slowly, the two angels came from underneath the bed and when he was completely out, Dean rewarded Gabriel with a bite-size piece of chocolate, which the angel took happily. Dean had shifted to a cross-legged position and Gabriel plopped down near him, focused on unwrapping the treat. When Castiel realized that Dean wasn’t going to give him a piece, he nudged his knee. The man looked over at the angel, who was gazing at him with big blue eyes, a slight pout on his lips.

“What is it?” He asked. Castiel shifted his gaze from Dean to Gabriel and back. “Castiel, I don’t understand what you want. You’re gonna have to speak.”

Castiel shook his head and sat heavily near them, his gaze fixed on his feet. He couldn’t speak, didn’t Dean understand that? He couldn’t speak.

He felt someone shaking his shoulder and looked up to see Gabriel holding a piece of chocolate to him. He accepted the piece and smiled at his brother then began unwrapping the candy.

“You wanted candy? That’s all?” Dean asked. “Kid, why didn’t you just say so?”

Castiel looked up and scrunched his face up at Dean. He turned a little, fluffing his feathers up and positioning his little wings to hide his body from Dean’s sight as much as possible. Behind him, Gabriel let out another rough cough. 

Dean rested his hand on the sick angel’s forehead, groaning when he realized that his fever had gone back up, yet again.

“Alright, we need to get some actual food in you two,” He told them, standing up and picking up the last two pieces of candy he’d found. “Come on and let’s figure out what we’ve got.” He didn’t bother trying to pick Gabriel up, sure that the little angel was still mad at him, and cast a glance at Castiel. The smallest had his wings puffed and wasn’t facing him. Dean had obviously upset him, but what did he say?

With a shrug, he left the room and headed to the kitchen. He bypassed the cereal, deciding he didn't want to risk another milky mess, and found a peach in his fridge. He turned to see Gabriel standing behind him.

“Do you like peaches?” He asked. The angel nodded and Dean pulled the fruit out, getting a knife and cutting board out to cut the juicy fruit up so he could put Gabriel’s medicine on it. After scooping most of it into a bowl, he left to find the medicine and came back to find Gabriel crouching on the counter, picking pieces out of the bowl.

“Hey!” Dean protested. Gabriel’s head snapped up and he scrambled off the counter, landing on all fours. Dean went to the counter and cast a dark glance at Gabriel, who physically flinched. Dean frowned at the reaction, but turned to read the instructions on the bottle. He followed them, crushing the pill then sprinkling the dust over the peach pieces, stirring it a bit. By the time he finished, Gabriel had disappeared. 

“Um… Gabriel?”

He searched for the angel, finding him in the bedroom with Castiel. The two had their backs to the door and were sitting close together, heads down. Now that he knew Gabriel hated his wings being touched, he noticed that Castiel’s wings were carefully folded to keep from brushing the feathers. 

“Hey guys,” Dean whispered, standing in the doorway. Both angels turned their heads at his voice and his heart sank to see their guarded expressions. Through their games and play the day before, the angels had begun to warm up to him. Now, they looked even more wary of him than when they’d first seen him. “Look, whatever I did, I’m sorry. But I’ve got peaches cut up for you to eat out in the kitchen, you just need to come out, okay? I’m not gonna force you, but I would like it if you came out to eat.”

Neither angel moved and Dean sighed, leaving the dark room and sitting on the futon. He picked up one of the books on angel behavior, wondering if he’d missed something, and searched through it, keeping an eye on the bedroom doorway. He’d given up and closed the book when he saw the two angels emerge, both walking hunched over on all fours, their wings held defensively.

“Hey,” Dean called softly. Both froze, swivelling their heads to view him. “Is it alright if I come over to give you your bowls so you don’t have to crawl up on the counter?”

Neither angel made any movement so Dean slowly stood up and made his way to the kitchen. They both watched him cautiously as he passed them and grabbed the bowls. He crouched down and after some hesitation, the angels came up to him. He handed the bowls to each angel, ensuring that Gabriel took the right one, and backed off, letting the two eat in peace as he flopped back onto the futon. He was playing a mindless game on his phone when he felt the futon move a little bit and looked up to see Gabriel perched on the very edge. The little angel edged closer to Dean as the man held still, and ended up curled next to his hip. Dean carefully reached down to pat Gabriel’s head, which he knew was safe since he’d seen Sam do it, freezing when the angel tensed. He eventually felt a soft nudge against his hand and looked down to see Gabriel having pushed his head against his hand. Dean began moving his fingers through the angel’s hair and watched him close his eyes and rest his head on his hip. He eventually became aware of a very quiet rumbling coming from the little being and was surprised to realize that he was  _ purring _ . Castiel soon joined them, hopping on the futon and settling down near Dean’s shoulder. 

They lay like that for a while. Gabriel shifted at one point so his head was on Dean’s hip and one arm was slung across his thigh. The new position meant that Dean could feel the vibrations running through the little angel as he purred and he was struck by how catlike the little creatures were. Slowly, Gabriel’s purrs died away and Dean looked to see that the angel had fallen asleep again. Dean couldn’t blame him. He was so sick and he’d spent the majority of the morning hiding under a bed. He didn’t have much energy to begin with: his multiple naps the day before proved that. Dean leaned, still running his fingers through the soft golden hair. Castiel, who was still awake, moved to lay across Dean’s chest and he moved his other hand to hold the little angel up. 

The three lay like that for a few hours. At one point, Dean drifted off to a light sleep, tired due to his late night the night before. He woke when he felt Gabriel stirring.

“So, there’s someone I need to see, someone you know,” He spoke to the two, still having no idea if they understood him. He knew that they understood basic concepts, like ‘what game do you want to play’ or ‘do you like peaches’, but wasn’t sure how complex their understanding of English was. “Her name is Jody. Do you remember her?”

Gabriel, who had moved to sit on his stomach, nodded with a small smile. Castiel, lying sideways across Dean’s chest, did too.

“Okay, good. Well, we’re gonna go see her today. Is that okay?”

Gabriel’s eyes lit up as he nodded, a smile growing on his face. Dean chuckled at the angel’s enthusiasm.

“Alright, well, in order to go see, her, you need to get dressed in new clothes. Can you go do that?”

Instead of making a motion to reply, Gabriel simply rolled off Dean. Then kept rolling and fell off the futon, landing with a small  _ oof _ . Dean shifted to look at him and saw that he’d landed spread-eagle, belly down. The angel lay there for a second before he got up and went to his duffle bag, grabbing a new shirt and jeans then started changing right there. Dean quickly turned his head.

“Note to self, teach about privacy in certain situations,” He muttered to himself. Castiel, hearing him, lifted his head with a slightly confused look. Dean patted the angel’s head, assuring him that it was nothing.

While he waited for Gabriel to finish, he reflected on the angels’ mannerisms. Gabriel had a serious sweet tooth, that much was obvious, and it was looking like Castiel did too. One of Dean’s favorite things about the smallest angel already was the little squint/head-tilt thing he did when faced with a concept he didn’t understand or was confused about. It was quite endearing.

Gabriel hopped back on the bed. “Let’s go!” He rasped, his voice a whisper.

“Shoes?” Dean lifted a brow as Gabriel jumped back off, finding shoes. Castiel shimmied away, mirroring his brother in their search for their shoes. Dean pulled on his boots, lacing them up as Gabriel and Castiel pulled their shoes on, coming over to him with twin grins.

“Tie?” Gabriel asked. Dean saw that their laces were knotted and Dean made a mental note to teach them how to tie their own shoes. Despite this, he leaned down and quickly tied four small shoes. “Up!” Gabriel reached his arms up and Dean obliged, picking the angel up. Castiel reached for Dean’s hand and Dean shifted Gabriel to his hip so he could let the smaller angel hold his hand. Gabriel rested his head against Dean’s neck, Dean feeling immediately how hot the child was. Despite his fever and how miserable he must be feeling, he wriggled with excitement as the three of them went to Dean’s car. The drive was short, Dean’s apartment being close to the station. 

Dean carried both angels inside, not willing to let either walk into the place that he knew would be crowded. Both flinched when a dark-haired girl walked across and Dean stood in the doorway for a few moments, unsure of how he should ask for Jody. He took in the atmosphere of the station.

There were whistles and chirps coming from the pen that held three angels in the corner of the main room. Two were wrestling while the third was clinging to the sides of the pen, whistling at everyone that passed. Loud voices surrounded them, some officers on phones, some talking to each other. 

“Dean!” 

The call had Dean look up to see Donna Hanscum, a Deputy Sheriff and one of his friends, hurrying over. The bubbly officer grinned as she saw Gabriel and Castiel, and Gabriel leaned to her, reaching out for her to take him.

“Hey, honey,” She greeted, taking the angel from Dean’s arms. She frowned the moment she took him, having felt the heat radiating from his skin. “Is he okay?”

“Sick, with a nasty fever.” Dean explained. “I’m looking after them while Sam can’t.”

“I heard, car crash, right?” Dean nodded. “Oof. I’m sorry.”

“He’ll heal. It might take a while, but he’ll be okay.”

“Dean Winchester.” 

He looked away from Donna to see Jody standing with her hands on her hips. She walked briskly to him, pulling him into a hug, mindful of Castiel. 

“I must say, I never thought I’d see you with angels in your arms,” She commented.

“Up until yesterday, I never thought I would either.” Dean agreed. “Sammy called me a few days ago, saying he needed someone to watch them since he’d be gone all day, and couldn’t find anyone. I agreed cause he needed help, and then watched them through the day. Around dinner time, I got a call that he was in a car wreck and took these two and went to go see him. He asked me to take care of them till he was able to do so himself and I agreed.”

Gabriel turned and leaned to Jody to be held and Donna gave him up. Castiel then reached to Donna and she took him from Dean, causing him to laugh.

“What is this, pass the angel?”

“I’m kinda surprised Gabriel hasn’t said anything yet. What’s wrong honey?” Jody turned her attention to the angel at the second sentence and he plonked his head against her neck, his little wings shuddering as she ran a hand through his hair.

“He’s sick, his throat’s so sore that he really can’t talk. His voice is pretty much gone.”

“Aw, poor baby,” Donna cooed as she bounced Castiel, who was snuggled up against her chest with a smile. 

After a few minutes of the three chatting and passing the angels, the little ones spotted the play pen and squirmed a little. Gabriel managed to get Dean to put him down and they followed him over to the pen where he poked his fingers through the side and chirped hoarsely. One of the wrestling angels perked up when he heard him and rolled off of the other. He bounced to the side and pushed the other angel out of the way, chirping a reply to Gabriel. After a few moments of this exchange, Gabriel turned and pointed to the pen. Jody got the message and picked him up, lowering him into the pen. Castiel reached down to be with his brother and Donna complied, dropping the little one in the pen. The angel Gabriel was talking to, a thin blond with cream-colored wings, chirped at Castiel, who merely waved.

“He still doesn’t talk?” Jody asked Dean.

“He has a little, but not happily. I don’t know why he doesn’t.”

“That’s… a long story related to how we got him,” Jody sighed. “Why don’t you come to my office, we’ll talk about it here.”

“What about those two?”

“They’re fine. They’ve got other angels to play with and plenty of supervision. We’ve had Balthazar over a few times, he’s real good with new angels. They’ll be just fine.”

“Alright then.”

Dean followed Jody to her office, where she started a coffee maker.

“Want any?”

“Sure.”

After both had their coffee and were settled down, Jody began her story.

“Well, we’d gotten a call about a year ago…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Backstory coming! We'll get to see what poor Cas and Gabe have been through.
> 
> Please comment! I love hearing what you think!


	4. Part One

**1 YEAR EARLIER**

“Sheriff?”

Jody looked up at a knock on her office door to see Don standing in the doorway.

“We got a call of an angel farm.”

Jody swore under her breath. “When?”

“Just now. We’re getting a team together right now. Wanted to see if you wanted to come along?”

“Yeah, I’ll come.” Don, and the rest of the station, knew that Jody had a particular hatred for angel farms. She would disband as many as she could. Everyone knew that she would be on every team that got rid of the farms, except that being Sheriff, she got caught up with other duties.

Following Don from the office, she saw that eight other officers were waiting.

“Alright, where’s this farm at?” She asked as the team made their way to the vehicles. They took two transport vans, which were similar to animal control vans but bigger due to angels’ size. She got in one with Donna, who answered.

“Near Rickman’s Street. Pulling up satellite images, this place looks terrible.” At a red light, she held the tablet she was holding for Jody to see. She glanced down momentarily and even through the grainy image, she could tell that Donna was right. Not only was it in a bad part of town, it was right next to an abandoned junkyard that was basically a tetanus trap. Jody had been trying to get approval from the state to get rid of the rusty metal for years, but never did. If she wasn’t afraid of losing her job, she would have taken care of it herself.

When they got there, they parked in front of the ramshackle house. It took only a few seconds for everyone else to get there and the raid started.

There were very few laws and documents that determined what exactly qualified as angel abuse, unlike typical pet animals like dogs or cats, but everyone agreed that angel farms were  _ definitely  _ abusive. Angels were forced to breed before they reached maturity, fledgelings were taken from the mothers and isolated far too soon after birth, and the discipline measures could be deadly. Some of these included plucking or clipping wings, damaging the vocal cords, even whipping the angels. Not to mention the terrible conditions they were housed in- too-small cages, their feces rarely cleaned and if it was cleaned, often cleaned poorly, and not enough food or water.

There was a reason Jody hated them so much.

There didn’t seem to be any sign of the people who ran the farm. They’d probably gotten wind that the cops were coming and bolted. Following the sounds of chirps and whistles, Jody led a group to the first closed door. A horrible stink blew out, causing someone to gag. The whistling was much louder, obvious when Jody recovered from the blast and opened her eyes. 

“My  _ God _ ,” She whispered. 

Angels were stacked in cages, some three high. Multiple were bleeding and they were all in single cages. There were multiple that were too big and they sat hunched over, their wings touching the sides. They were all frighteningly bony and Jody thought she saw some dead ones.

“You guys get them out of here and call Ellen,” Jody ordered, her voice tight. “I’m going to check for more.”

The four officers she’d gone in with obeyed quickly as she left. She passed another room that the other five officers that had come along were evacuating. She kept checking rooms in the one-floor house and found nothing until she reached the last. 

There was only one cage, slightly bigger than the rest, but this one housed two angels instead of one. Upon seeing her, one began hissing, crawling on all fours in front of the other, perching on its finger- and toe-tips. As she got closer, Jody could see that where there should have been fangs, the angel’s teeth were dulled to near straight edges. Both of them were naked, like all the rest. A sharp gasp tore itself from Jody’s throat when she saw the hissing angel’s wings, which were fanning up in an attempt at intimidation. 

They were almost completely absent of feathers, likely plucked, and the skin was covered in cuts and oozing sores. The angel couldn’t even fully extend them, but whether that was due to the injuries or the confines of the cage, Jody couldn’t tell.

She hurried to pick the cage up, one hand on the bottom to stabilize it, and was alarmed at how light it was. Two angels in a cage should have been much heavier. 

As she walked out of the house, the hissing angel, who was still hissing, pulled the soiled towel that covered the bottom of the cage and began poking at her hands, which should have hurt. It merely felt like a small child was poking her. She looked at the angels hands to see why, and felt sick to her stomach. 

The little angel's fingertips were covered in blood and looked swollen and bruised. His nails, which would have grown out to be pointed and claw like, had been ripped out. Recently, it looked. Despite this, and the pain the angel must have been feeling, he kept poking. If he'd had nails, he would have scratched Jody's hands to bits.

Jody couldn't tell if this had been done to the other angel in the cage, who was huddled in a corner, his feathers intact but disgustingly clumpy and soiled, and desperately hoped it hadn't been done to any of the other angels. With his teeth filed and claws removed, the angels natural defense mechanisms were gone. If he was released to the wild right now, he would die in days. 

"Is that all of them?" Jody asked as Donna put a cage in one if the vehicles. 

"Yeah, but we don't have any more room in either van for that one," Donna motioned to Jody's cage, the hissing angel's growling getting louder when the women spoke. 

"We'll keep it in the front with us. You drive. Don!"

"Yeah?"

"Tell everyone to load it up and go. Did someone get ahold of Ellen?"

Ellen Harvelle was the best veterinarian in the city and the only one qualified to take care of angels in this condition. 

"Yes, she's getting her things ready and going to meet us at the station. She said we'll use this clinic in the station as much as possible, take the really bad ones to her office after she can assess them."

"Alright, good. Let's get going then."

The drive back to the station was stressful. Due to the whistles from the back of the van and the hissing and growls from one of the angels in the cage up front, it couldn't be silent. 

"At least he's a fighter," Jody muttered as the angel bared his dulled teeth at her. 

"Oh yeah," Donna replied. "Some of the ones in the back, they’ve got no life in them.”

As if on cue, the whistles coming from the back got louder and some angels began screaming.

“What the hell…?” Jody muttered. “Keep driving, I’m gonna check this out.” She unbuckled and, ignoring the enraged angel's growls as she moved, turned around. Kneeling on her seat, she slid open a little window that allowed them to view the back.

Every angel was pressed up against the walls of their cage to be as close as possible to one, which was lying still. Its wings were limp and shimmering, taking on the slightly translucent look that angel’s wings only took in one condition.

“What is it?” Donna asked as Jody retook her seat.

“One of the angels died,” She replied heavily. It wasn’t uncommon for angels to die on the way to the station after a raid on a farm, but it didn’t make it hit any less painfully. They were living creatures, after all, ones that could learn English. 

“Hate that,” Donna murmured. 

A few minutes later, another died.

“ _ Vehicle 2406, this is Vehicle 2398, come in, _ ” The radio crackled to life and Jody took it from its stand. 

“2398, go ahead, over.”

“ _ We’ve got angels dying at higher rates than normal. Are you having that? Over. _ ”

Jody handed Donna the receiver and crawled back to check. A low whine came from the front cage as she opened the window and she sighed heavily when she returned to her seat, taking the radio back. 

“We’ve lost seven out of twelve. How many have you lost, over?”

“ _ We’ve lost eight out of ten. How do you have two extra, ten only fit in the vans. Over. _ ”

“We’ve got one cage in the front with two in it. It was the only way to bring them back. Over.”

Jody looked down to see both angels in the cage cowering against the side farthest from the back and remembered that angels gave off a pheromone when they died. These two must have been smelling it. The bigger one looked like he was trying to shield the smaller with his wings from the chemical.

“ _ Alright, thanks for the information. 2398 out. _ ”

Jody put the receiver back in its holder and sighed.

“Shit.” Donna muttered. It was rare that the bubbly officer cursed, but this was definitely a situation that deserved it.

“Yeah.”

“How’s the other one?” Donna asked after a few moments. “The small one? It hasn’t made any noise, has it?”

“No, it hasn’t,” Jody murmured. She looked down to see the bigger angel still hissing but chirping a little at the smaller angel. Its nails were intact but claws hadn’t grown in, showing that it was much younger, maybe only a few months. “His claws haven’t grown in so he’s only a few months, but he should be chirping and whistling. Don’t they make noise from birth?”

“Yeah, they do. Why do you think he’s not?”

“Who knows? It’s got to have something to do with the conditions they’ve been living in. Either that or he was born mute, but I’ve not heard of that happening before. Angels need their voice, especially in the wild.”

While fangs and claws were an angel’s first natural defense mechanisms, their voice and wings would turn into more defense mechanisms, and their voice was their best method of communication. Sure, they could use body language, but they often used their voice, speaking in chirps, whistles, screams, and many other vocal methods including speech. Along with this, when they reached maturity, they could speak at supersonic levels that could injure humans and break glass. An angel’s voice was one of its most important things, the other being their wings, which brought them flight. With their natural habitat being rocky cliffs, they were needed. Taking those away was considered torture. If Jody’s suspicion was right, and they usually were, then the people running this farm had been experimenting with disciplinary methods and ended up torturing the pair. One by harming his wings, the other by taking away his voice, either by training it to not make noise or by damaging his throat. Ellen’s examination would reveal more.

By the time they got to the station, all of the angels in the back were lying with translucent wings. Jody was sure that would be the case for the smaller angel if it hadn’t been for the bigger. He’d been hissing and growling most of the way, but closer to the end of the drive, the smaller one hand laid down. The bigger had turned and began nudging him and chirping softly. His persistence caused the little one to sit up eventually and he sat next to him, chirping softly with the occasional whistle.

“Drop me at the front so I can get these two inside as soon as possible,” Jody told Donna, who nodded and turned in to the parking lot. Jody hopped out and grabbed the cage, a hand under the bottom. As she hurried inside, she put up with the incessant poking from the bigger angel while the smaller clung to the side, alarm in his eyes.

“Joseph, get two bath buckets ready,” She ordered as she pushed the door open. The officer jumped up from his desk immediately upon seeing the angels and hurried to the back, where their clinic and showers were.

It wasn’t uncommon to get injured angels in, especially since shelters often had angels on display for adoption at police and fire stations. There was a protocol for them now. Should an injured angel, or multiple, turn up at the station, someone would fill up a bath bucket with warm water and soap and help clean any grime off before wounds were tended to. 

Jody carried the angels to the back while the buckets were being prepared and crouched in front of them.

“Alright,” She began. “I don’t know if you can understand English, but we’re going to get you cleaned up, okay? We’re going to give you a bath so we can bandage up all your wounds, then we’re gonna give you something to eat. Does that sound good?”

The bigger angel, who had started his growling when she started speaking, paused for a few seconds. Jody thought she’d gotten through to him until he began hissing again, moving from his sitting position to balancing on his finger- and toe-tips.

A door opened and Joseph came in. Immediately, the angels stilled, staring up at him.

“Um… The buckets are ready,” He told Jody, who nodded and picked up the cage. The moment he felt movement, the angel started growling,  _ once again _ .

“Please stop,” Jody muttered as she followed Joseph to the showers. “Alright, we’ll try to clean the smaller one first. He wasn’t doing so good on the drive over. Donna should be over in a few minutes, she was parking the van.”

“Okay,” Joseph replied, grabbing a cloth. “If you’ll grab him, we can start.”

Jody kneeled down in front of the cage and opened the clasp, deftly grabbing the smaller angel before shutting it quickly. The moment her hands closed around him, he began fighting to get away, thrashing and flapping his stubby wings. Jody quickly took him to the bath bucket, which was when everything went sideways.

The moment the angel saw water sitting in the bucket, his entire demeanor shifted from frightened to absolutely terrified. He began fighting even more the closer they got to the bucket, kicking and even clinging to her arm, pulling his legs away when she started to try to put him down. At some point, he even began screaming, which Jody had only heard from a few angels, all who had been taken from an abusive owner and were faced with the abuser again. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” Jody muttered as she pulled the angel away from the water. He’d begun crying from fear at one point, which had become sobbing. He still fought but his struggles had lessened when the water was out of sight. 

“How can I help?” Tessa asked as she walked in. Both angels fell silent as they saw her, then began struggling stronger than before. The bigger angel began making more noise, his whistling getting louder than it had ever been. The smaller even began making noise, his fearful whistling soft and hoarse. Tessa backed back up to the door, her eyes wide.

“Can you grab two sedative shots?” Jody asked as she struggled to keep ahold of the angel in her hands. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get anything done unless we can calm them down.”

Tessa nodded and quickly left. As soon as she was out of sight, both angels quieted, the smaller falling silent again. He still struggled and Jody eventually pulled him against her stomach to use both arms to hold him still. 

“Tessa said you wanted these?” Donna finally managed to show up with the sedative shots. “Sorry I took so long, I had to park then get people to clean out the back and take the dead ones to the morgue and figure out how they died. Don’s back, says he only has one that‘s still alive.”

“Yes, thank you. Joseph, can you get another bath bucket? Donna, if you could, get the shot in his bicep.”

The two quickly followed their orders. By the time Donna was at her side, the angel had managed to free his head from Jody’s hold. When the shot went into his arm, he squealed and bit Jody’s arm. His needle-sharp fangs were tiny, and hardly pierced the skin, but Jody’s arm tensed momentarily from the pain but relaxed quickly so she didn’t end up squishing the angel. He still struggled, but the sedative was fast-acting and he soon fell still. It was only a relaxant, but that was enough. The angel looked up at her with drowsy eyes as she took him to the bath bucket, a whine escaping his lips as she lowered him into the water. He struggled a bit, his movement sluggish, as she scrubbed him clean. A piercing screech sounded as Donna and Joseph worked together to get the bigger angel sedated, but his struggles slowed as well. He still voiced his unhappiness, in a low whiny voice that was masked with fatigue. The smaller angel’s head nodded as the relaxant dose caused him to grow sleepy. He was so dirty that she had to change out the water three times, not including the mess cleaned out of his wings, but eventually, he was clean and Jody lifted him out and wrapped him in a towel. She held him like a baby, his head resting against her chest as she rubbed him dry.

“You must feel so sleepy, huh?” She murmured as she walked around the room. “All of a sudden so tired?” She looked down to see him gazing up at her, his dark hair dripping water beads down his face. His eyes, a vivid blue she noticed, were dark with exhaustion and he looked as though he might fall asleep at any moment. Jody pulled part of the towel up to dry his hair and when she pulled away, his eyes had closed. He was tense, she could feel, and he hadn’t relaxed when his eyes had closed. With a struggle, he forced them to open again. Despite this, Jody could see that he wasn’t really awake, more in a half-asleep state due to the drugs they’d just pushed into his tiny body.

Soon enough, Donna brought the other angel over, wrapped in a towel. He was in a similar sleepy state, a dark frown etched on his face. His hair, now free of grime, was a pretty tawny-gold color.

“Ellen and Ash are here,” Don told them as he came in, carrying a cage. The angel inside was lying somewhat listlessly on the side of the cage, but was growling lowly at anyone it saw. 

“You may have to sedate it,” Jody told him. “The one I’m holding practically crawled up my arm, like a cat in a bath, to avoid the water. We didn’t even try to get the other one close without it.

“I don’t know if this one has enough energy to struggle that much,” Don mused. “She looks so… She’s probably almost dead, to be honest.”

“That’s the only one left from your van?” 

“Yeah.”

Jody cursed softly. “We’ve never lost that many before.”

“How many is that? Three out of twenty?”

“Twenty-two, but yeah. Only a seventh of the ones we took.”

Don shook his head. “That’s terrible.”

‘Definitely. We’re gonna get these two to Ellen, you get that one washed up.”

With that, Jody left the shower room to the clinic, Donna following close by.

“Hey, Jody,” Ellen greeted. “How many do I have to look at?” She knew all too well the mortality rate of farm angels.

“Three,” Jody answered sourly. “The last one’s getting washed up. We had to sedate these two, they were struggling so much. This one bit me and if he could, the other probably would have been biting. His teeth were filed.”

Ellen winced. “Well, put them down on the table. Ash, get my things out. Unwrap them from the towels but sit them on top of them.”

The two cops obeyed and Ellen was taken aback by the state of the bigger one’s wings. Despite their being cleaned up, they were still oozy and gross.

“Alright, I’m going to take care of this one. Ash, look at the other.”

“He almost didn’t make it on the ride back,” Jody told him. The little angel was leaning against her arm, his eyes half-closed, wings hanging limply. “If the other one hadn’t been so upset and bothered him, he probably would have died.”

“Alright, well, let’s take a look at you,” Ash murmured as he pulled rubber gloves on. He surveyed the wounds on the little one and shook his head with a low sigh. “This poor thing looks terrible.”

The room was filled with chatter between the two veterinarians as they worked to patch the two angels up with whines from the bigger angel as Ellen tended to his wings. Despite the relaxant, he tried to squirm away the moment she touched them. The sedative did its job a bit too well as by the time Ash finished, the smaller angel was asleep, despite the sting from the alcohol used to disinfect his wounds. Soon after, the angel Don had was brought in and he set to work to patch her up.

“What do you have in ways of clothing them?” Ellen asked as she worked. 

“We have some diapers,” Jody murmured. “I have a t-shirt in my car that I can give up. Anything we need we can get from the store across the street.”

“Get them in diapers, but someone’s going to need to watch them constantly. They’ve got some serious rashes going on and any moisture is only going to make them worse. They must have been sitting in dirty cages for at least a week.”

“Any way you can tell how old they are?” Donna asked. Ellen sighed a little.

“The littler one should be easier,” She replied. “This one will be tough. The best determining factors- teeth, nails, and wings- are all mangled so badly that I can’t use them. He’s so starved that I can’t tell if he’s been stunted.” She lifted his foot and he regarded her somewhat curiously through the drugs. His head was wobbling as if he couldn’t hold it up on his own anymore. Jody thought it was because of the sedative. She’d been holding the little dark-haired angel since Ash had finished with him and he was cuddled up to her chest, finally looking peaceful. His eyes were loosely closed and his thumb had found its way to his mouth. As she rocked the little angel, she was reminded of her own son in one heartbreaking moment and had to blink away tears. In his sleep, the angel shifted a little and his thumb fell, leaving his little lips slightly parted.

“I have some blankets,” Tessa spoke softly. Despite this, the bigger angel looked up as she spoke and bristled at the sight of her. Jody accepted one from her and carefully wrapped the angel she held in it. It was a pretty blue and very soft, which would feel nice on his skin.

“They don’t seem to like females much,” She told Ellen, who had frowned at the bigger angel’s reaction to seeing Tessa. “But they seem to hate Tessa. I can’t tell why.”

“Maybe it’s the dark hair,” Ash suggested. “There’s a possibility that it was women that ran the farm and maybe some of them had long, dark hair. None of them look old enough to be able to recognize faces well yet, so they have to use other features, and hair is one they tend to use.” 

Ash was well-versed in angel psychology, Jody knew, so he probably had the best knowledge of their behavior of anyone in the room. She trusted his assessment and it looked like Ellen did too. 

“That could also be why this one hated water so much,” Jody suggested. “Something to do with how they were treated.”

“That’s terrible,” Donna whispered, coming over to look at the sleeping angel, now swaddled in the blanket. Tessa set the remaining blankets on the counter and left after seeing just how much her presence bothered the bigger angel. The one Ash was working on was facing away from the door and had her head down, letting Ash work on her. 

“Alright, I’m done,” Ellen finally stepped back from the bigger angels. He was covered in bandages and his wings were totally wrapped. His head was slowly falling, but he jerked back up. It was obvious that he was falling asleep from the sedative but so on guard that he didn’t want to. “We need to get them somewhere to sleep.”

She picked him up and he squealed and struggled a little before giving an audible sigh and giving up, bonking his head against Ellen’s chest. She carried him over to the counter and grabbed a green blanket, wrapping him carefully. He looked at it, bewildered, then stared up at Ellen. She smiled a little at him as he leaned to rub his cheek against the soft material. 

“Here, they can sleep here,” Donna came back with a bigger cage, this one with a plastic bottom. The angel’s eyes widened and he tensed as Ellen took him over to it. The closer he got, the more he struggled, despite the drugs forcing him calm. By the time Ellen tried to put him in, he was flailing and wailing. She pulled him away and backed away from the cage, placing a hand on his back to press him to her. She felt him trembling as he stared at the cage and Jody could see the unbridled fear in his whiskey-colored eyes.

“I don’t think they’ll go back in another cage,” She spoke up. “And I don’t think I really want to put them in one, not after what they’ve been through.”

“So where then?” Don asked, glancing at Ash as he finished up with the angel he was working with, wrapping her in an orange blanket and picking her up, bouncing slightly to try to soothe her to sleep.

“We have that pen that we keep some of the shelter angels in,” Joseph suggested. Jody hadn’t even seen him come in. “We could put them there.”

“They need constant monitoring so they don’t sit in wetness,” Ellen reminded. “Who’s willing to stay with them? We also need to put them in those diapers you said you had.”

“I can stay,” Jody murmured. “You guys can go home.”

“Jods, you sure?” Donna asked. “I can stay with you.”

“No, it’s fine. I… I haven’t been sleeping well since…” She trailed off then shook her head. “Besides, you need your sleep. I can watch them on my own just fine.”

Joseph came back in with the diapers. Again, Jody hadn’t noticed him leaving. Ellen had him put them on the counter and pulled one out, holding the angel with one hand.

“These should fit the girl and the one I’m holding, but they’ll be way too big for the other one. Can someone grab some for a… Maybe a newborn?”

“I’ll go,” Don volunteered.

“So, how old do you think they are?” Jody asked. 

“The one I’m holding, I think… maybe around seven months. I’ll be able to tell more accurately when his feathers grow back. Bring yours over.”

Jody did so and the bigger angle tried to turn to see him. Ellen shifted him so he could see, and he relaxed a little when he saw that he was asleep. He leaned forward a bit to sniff him. Jody thought he was perhaps making sure the death pheromone wasn’t coming off of him.

Ellen reached forward and shifted the little one’s lips to reveal his teeth, which were tiny but sharp and fang-shaped, causing him to make a soft sound in his sleep. She reached down to pull one of his hands free from the blanket and investigated his nails, which only slightly resembled claws, the edges dull. She had Jody unwrap him to see his wings and used the tips of her fingers to lift the edges of his feathers. She nodded, allowing him to be wrapped back up.

“He’s no older than three months. Maybe a week or two if his growth is delayed from the conditions he lived in, but that’s it.”

“Why don’t we get these two into diapers?” Ash suggested. Ellen nodded and Donna found baby powder, holding it up in a silent question of whether or not it should be used. They did and as Ellen set the angel she held down, he whined softly. They got the two wrapped up quickly and swaddled back up in their blankets. Ellen bounced her angel a bit and he yawned then drowsily snuggled in his blanket, blinking up at her. She smiled at him to try to put him more at ease as he fell under the sedative’s clutches. He had almost nodded off by the time Don arrived. He was sent to set up the pen with Donna and Joseph while the three holding angels got the last diaper put on and followed the others to Jody’s office, where they’d agreed to put the pen. It was set up with some pillows they’d found lying around and a plushie from Don’s car, left behind by his daughter. They set the angels in to sleep, putting the two males near each other since they’d been housed together. The motion caused one to open his eyes and Ellen smoothed her hand over his now fluffy hair. 

“Go to sleep,” She soothed. “I’ll be back in the morning. You’re safe here.”

He sighed softly as his eyes slid slowly closed and he finally,  _ finally _ , fell asleep

One by one, they left, Ellen telling Jody she would be back to check on how they were doing the next morning. Donna said she’d come in early and Jody told her she didn’t have to, knowing it was pointless to try to say.

Throughout the night, Jody changed diapers about every two hours. The sedative had completely taken hold and the two males never woke up through their changings. The female, however, hadn’t been sedated and simply looked up at Jody as she was changed, lying listlessly on the desk. It was a long night that Jody used to catch up on some paperwork she was behind on. A few night shift officers came in occasionally to check on her and see the angels- word got around the station fast- but that was it.

It was near morning when it happened. 

Jody was changing the angels again, starting with the sleeping ones this time. She changed the female last and froze when she unwrapped her.

Her wings, formerly a speckled tan, were translucent.

Jody, despite knowing that angel’s wings only turned translucent in death, searched for a pulse and breathing before starting CPR on the tiny creature. She had no idea how long she’d been dead, and after a few minutes, gave up. She sighed heavily and rested her hands against the desk. It was then that Donna showed up, carrying donuts and a coffee.

“Hey Jods,” She spoke softly to avoid waking the angels. “I brought breakfast and some coffee for you- What’s wrong?” She hurried over, setting the food on a small table near the wall. “Oh, no, poor thing.”

“I have no clue how long it’s been. Less than two hours, I know, but the scent of the pheromone could have gotten all over everything in that pen by now. The other two could wake up and freak out.”

“Why don’t we wait for Ellen?” Donna asked, rewrapping the little angel and watching Jody carefully. She recognized the look in her eyes and didn’t like it.

It was too similar to the look she had after her son and husband’s joint funeral.

Jody took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll be good.”

“Why don’t you have some donuts and coffee, yeah?” Donna steered her friend away from the desk and handed her the cup. Jody took a sip and closed her eyes, glad that Donna knew her well enough to order the drink how she liked it.

“Thank you, Donna,” She murmured. 

“It’s no problem, really. You just stayed up all night for those little things, it’s least I can do.”

A few minutes later, Ellen and Ash showed up. They were quickly informed of the deceased angel and looked over the other two, who didn’t wake up, even through the redressing of their wounds.

“Oh, Jods, you never did anything to that bite last night,” Donna suddenly spoke. Jody had, quite frankly, forgotten about it.

“What bite?” Ellen asked. Jody rolled up her sleeve, which she’d unrolled at some point during the night, and showed her the mark. It had only bled a little and wasn’t very deep, but the tiny punctures were in a perfect replication of the tiny angel’s mouth. Ellen quickly disinfected it and put a bandage on it. She and Ash were then invited for donuts.

It was just as they were finishing that the angels began to wake up. It was the smaller one first. He shifted slightly and lifted his head, confused at his inability to move. Jody leaned over and scooped him up, causing him to squeak in surprise. She held him gently and he stared up at her. She could tell that the sedative wasn’t yet out of his system- his eyes still had a drugged haze over them as he snuggled into the blanket, closing his eyes. After a few seconds, he reopened them, but this may have been because Ellen picked up the other angel, who let out a yowl of surprise. He’d not seen her coming either. The angel was rocked and it was clear he’d not woken up on his own- his eyes closed quickly and he fell back into a drugged sleep within seconds.

“They need to eat,” Ash murmured. “Who knows when they had something last?”

“They do need something…” Donna mumbled. “But what do you feed starved baby angels?”

“Regular baby formula is okay in a pinch,” Ellen answered. “AngeliCo has an angel formula, but the only AngeliCo is across town.”

“Don’t they do that delivery thing now?” 

“You’re right,” Jody went to her desk and turned on her computer, going to the AngeliCo website. “I remember that, I pulled over one of their drivers for speeding.”

She clicked the online shopping icon and went through the filters, finding formula quickly and adding it to the cart. Ellen soon joined her and helped pick out what would be best.

“Get them something to wear,” Donna suggested. “We won’t be able to keep them wrapped up in blankets forever.”

Jody obeyed, adding some pajama sets to the cart, figuring that the material would be soft against their sore skin. After a few more minutes of finding things the group thought would be good for the little ones, she finally ordered the items.

“Okay, so it says that the stuff should be here in a little over a half hour,” She read off, shifting the little angel in her arms. He’d begun to slide and she didn’t want to drop him.

“That should give them long enough to really wake up enough to eat,” Ash commented. He took the bigger angel from Ellen and held him carefully. His breaths came in little huffs and Ash shifted his lip up, shaking his head. “I can’t believe someone would file his teeth like that.”

“If I’m right on the age estimate, he should be getting his first new set soon, so hopefully they didn’t damage the next ones and he’ll have his fangs like normal,” Ellen told him. “I’m more worried about damage to his nails. If they messed up the nail beds when they ripped out his claws, he may not grow them back. We’ll have to keep him from damaging them more.”

“Is that why you added mittens to the cart?”

“Yeah. They’ll limit how much he can use his hands and fingers separately, hopefully protecting him. I’ve got each finger wrapped, too.” She pulled a hand from his blanket to show them. The tips of his fingers were wrapped in white gauze. “It’s tough to really keep the nail beds safe, especially on the hands, since we use them so much. Hopefully this will keep them safe enough for the damage to the skin to heal before we take it off officially.”

“How long till his claws grow back?” Donna asked. Ellen sighed.

“Probably at least six months. They were ripped out recently, by the looks of it.”

“These poor things,” Jody breathed. “They’re so little but they’ve been traumatized so much.”

“I mean, we’ve already got a list of things they fear,” Don muttered, having joined them at some point. “Women with long dark hair and cages.”

“This one is terrified of water,” Jody supplied.

“This one will probably never let anyone mess with his wings again.” Ash murmured.

“He’ll probably never have full use of his wings again, too.” Ellen sighed. She frowned at the confused and horrified faces around the room. “Did I not tell you?”

“Tell us what?”

“The damage to his wings wasn’t just feathers being plucked out, which is bad enough. I’m not sure how they did it, but there was serious damage to the muscles as well. He may not be able to fully extend his wings again and if he can fly, it’ll be weak.”

“Dammit,” Jody growled. “I  _ hate _ angel farms.”

“They’re both pretty scarred, both physically and mentally. It’ll take a lot to rehabilitate them to be able to go to a safe owner.  We may not be able to release them to live in the wild.”

Sure enough, by the time that the supplies arrived, the angels were waking up again. They drowsily blinked up at the women dressing them while Don and Ash prepared the formula. The tawny-haired angel was confused by the mittens that encapsulated his damaged fingers, shaking his hands to try to get them off. The two men soon brought over bottles with the formula and thus began the struggle to get the angels to eat.

Neither wanted the bottle at first. They kept turning their heads, lips pressed tightly shut.

“Come on, don’t make me tube you,” Ellen grumbled. She pressed the bottle against her angel’s lips, a few drops of formula falling onto his lips. Instinctively, he licked his lips and froze, staring at the bottle. Ellen tried again to get him to accept it, and this time he did, drinking the formula greedily, mittened hands free as he was no longer wrapped in a blanket and he moved them to hold the bottle.

Jody wasn’t having nearly the same luck with the smaller angel. He was still fighting as Ash came over, having watched how Ellen convinced the other to drink. He took the bottle from Jody and squeezed a few drops of the formula onto his lips. Unlike the other, however, the little one refused to open his mouth and the formula ran down his cheek instead. No matter what convincing they tried, the child refused to eat. The angel Ellen was holding had almost emptied his bottle and the other still hadn’t had a drop.

“Ellen, he won’t eat,” Jody groaned. “He refuses to eat.”

Ellen came over after the angel she held stopped drinking the formula, only an ounce or two left in the bottle. She patted his back to burp him as she looked at the other, who’d kept his mouth closed and was now squeezing his eyes shut, tears leaking out.

“Don’t force him,” She told her friend, pushing the bottle away gently. “It looks like oral aversion and forcing it will only make it worse.”

“What does that mean?” Donna asked.

“Oral aversion is where babies don’t want anything near their mouths, like bottles, pacifiers, even teethers. I don’t hear of it happening much with angel fledglings, but it can. We usually have to give them a feeding tube, which is unpleasant, but they’ll get food while we help them get over the aversion.”

“Do you have the supplies to tube him?” Jody asked. Ellen shook her head. 

“I’ll have to go back to my office, and I would prefer to do it there so I can make sure I do it right.”

After some discussion, they decided to put an NG tube in the little angel. Jody and Ellen were going to take him to her practice and bring him back to the station after they were done, the other angel was going to be left with Ash, Donna, and the rest of the station. This plan fell apart, however, when Jody began walking out and the tawny-haired angel began screaming. He struggled in Ash’s arms, reaching for the other. They were eventually forced to bring him with them in order to quiet him and Jody held the two angels on her lap as they drove to Ellen’s practice.

The insertion of the tube was unpleasant for everyone. Ellen had warned Jody that it would be uncomfortable for the angel to have it inserted- after all, it was a tube going from his nose to his stomach. She prepared a pacifier with sucrose on it to see if that would help if it was needed.

It was needed.

Ellen had hardly started when the angel began screaming and crying. Jody popped the pacifier in his mouth and his face twisted at the sensation of something in his mouth. He was, however, distracted by the sucrose. Still whimpering, he sucked in the sugary pacifier. Ellen finished before he’d managed to suck away all the sucrose and taped the tube to his cheek. She put some more sucrose in the pacifier to keep him quieted as she hooked the tube up to start getting food in his belly. While they were both distracted, nobody noticed the other angel dipping his fingers in the remaining sucrose solution and tasting it. Ellen did, however, see him sucking in his sugary fingers. He smiled at her around his fingers, the first slightly positive emotion she’d seen from either angel since they’d been rescued. Returning the smile, she got another pacifier out, coating it in the sugary substance and popping it in his mouth when he moved his fingers.

“We can get going anytime,” She told Jody, who was holding the black-haired angel. He’d spat the pacifier out and was staring up at her sullenly. He’d already tried to pull at the feeding tube and Jody was holding him so he couldn’t reach up anymore, causing him to pout even more. He squirmed in discomfort, unused to the sensation of food entering his belly and fussed as they carried the two out to the car. The tawny-haired angel sat quietly on the way back, sucking on the pacifier long after the sugar flavor was gone, but the black-haired angel shifted constantly. He never made a noise but was obviously unhappy. At one point, the bigger angel reached his mittened hands to the tube, but Jody nudged his hand down. 

Ellen parked her car but neither woman got out yet. They were already exhausted from dealing with the angels and it had just gotten harder with the feeding tube. 

With a collective deep breath, the two women carried the angels in, preparing themselves for the next roadblock.


	5. Part Two

A few days later, a routine was finally established.

The angels lived at the station. They never left, for fear that they would run away or be overwhelmed by new surroundings. They seemed content with it, though, but they were still jumpy. 

The bigger one whistled and chirped, but the smaller never made another sound. Ellen eventually diagnosed him as selectively mute. Both obviously understood English, as they were responsive when questions were asked, and the older one was old enough to have started speaking English, but never did. Whether it was a choice or delayed development, they weren’t sure.

Jody stayed at the station with them. She’d moved a pair of pajamas and a cot into her office for the nights and slept near the pen. The angels had learned quickly to get her attention if their diapers were wet and each had a different way of doing it. The bigger would chirp and make noise until Jody woke up while the smaller would throw things at her. If she didn’t wake before he ran out of toys to throw, he would rouse the bigger to wake her up. After the sedative fully wore off, mid-afternoon the day the smaller one was tubed, they discovered that the angels were fairly early risers, waking up before Ellen was over to give them their daily check up and redress their wounds. Most of the terrible rash they’d had was healed, but they wanted to make sure it stayed away and changed their diapers constantly.

“Good morning,” Jody greeted the angels as she made her coffee. They watched her quietly from their pen.

“Hi,” Came a small voice from behind her. She spun around to face the angels, both of which were standing pressed against the side of the pen. The smaller had his fingers laced through the netting, the bigger unable to due to his mittens.

“Did you say something?” Jody asked tentatively. The bigger angel let a smile take over his lips.

“Hi,” He repeated. 

Jody had heard that the first words of an angel, before its voice was tempered to English, was the closest a human could come to hearing its true voice. The true voice was the one that could break glass when angels hit full maturity. Human senses were too dull to truly perceive it, but it was believed that an angel's first words were the closest they could get to hear it. The true voice was supposed to be beautiful, but it was at a frequency humans couldn’t hear. Jody, in the seconds that followed the little angel speaking, fully believed the rumors. 

His voice was beautiful. It sounded like a chirping bird and the tinkling of bells all at once, smooth like honey and soothing. Jody had no idea that so much could go into a baby angel’s voice, but supposed that it didn’t matter that she didn’t know. She did now.

“Do you have names?” She asked, crouching in front of the pen. The angel frowned and tipped his head.

“Names?”

“Something for people to call you. Like… I’m Jody.”

“Jody…” The angel paused then lit up. “Gabriel,” He chirped, pointing to himself through the mitten. He then pointed to the other angel. “Castiel.”

“Gabriel and Castiel?” Jody echoed. The angel nodded excitedly, happy that he was able to make her understand. 

“Yes!” He bounced a bit. “Yes, yes, yes! Gabriel and Castiel and Jody!”

“That’s right,” Jody grinned. “Gabriel and Castiel and Jody.”

Gabriel poked at the pen. “What’s?”

“What is it?”

“What is it?” He echoed.

“This is a pen,” Jody told the angel, whose face was again overtaken by that huge, sunny smile. 

“Pen!” He cheered. “Pen!” He bounced around the pen, repeating the new word. Castiel stood in the corner, a small smile on his face as he watched his companion, his hand straying to the tube taped to his cheek. He didn’t try to pull or pick at it, his hand just rested on it, occasionally moving up and down.

“What’s?”

“That’s a blanket.”

“Blanket! Blanket, blanket, blanket! What’s?”

“That’s another blanket.”

“...What?”

“Those are both blankets, but they’re just different colors. Yours is green and Castiel’s is blue.”

“Colors? Green? Blue?”

“You know how nothing here looks the same?” Nod. “Part of that is because not everything is the same thing, but part of it is because things are different colors. You know what colors are, right?”

Gabriel tipped his head for a second, thinking, then nodded. “Green blanket?” He asked, holding up his blanket.

“Yes, that’s a green blanket.”

“Blue blanket?”

“Yep, that’s right!”

Gabriel’s face broke into another huge smile, the tiny overbite he had making it even cuter than just a child’s grin.

“Blue pen?” He was pointing to one of the sides of the pen.

“Yeah, that’s blue,” Jody replied. He bounced happily then held up a pillow.

“What’s!”

“Pillow.”

“Pillow, pillow, pillow!”

“Do you guys want to get out and explore a bit today?” Jody asked. 

“Yes!” Gabriel cheered.

“Castiel?”

The little angel’s attention snapped to Jody. His mouth opened slightly in slight confusion.

“Do you want to get out?”

The dark head nodded and Jody reached in, picking Gabriel up first and setting him on the ground as she grabbed Castiel. She didn’t put the smaller angel down but let Gabriel run around the office. The older angel pointed to different objects and Jody would tell him what they were, Gabriel loudly repeating her. Castiel was content to stay in her arms, one hand on the tube as always. He didn’t like it, it made his throat and nose burn, but he couldn’t get rid of it. He’d tried to pull on it but had only made the bad feelings worse.

This was how the majority of the week went. Occasionally Castiel would walk with Jody, but the much more subdued angel rarely went running excitedly like his companion.

“Me ‘n Cas’re brothers!” Gabriel announced at some point. His speech had improved a bunch since he’d first started learning how to speak. He absorbed information like a dry sponge and his vocabulary was growing every second.

Unfortunately, this meant that some of the more foul-mouthed officers had to watch themselves. Nobody wanted a potty-mouthed baby angel running around. 

“Castiel’s your brother?” Donna asked. She was watching them while Jody was taking care of a situation elsewhere.

“Yes!” Gabriel bounced. “Cassie’s brother!”

Castiel was currently sitting in the corner of the pen, his tube hooked up to the feeding pump. It was about lunchtime and Donna was getting Gabriel’s bottle put together. She’d gotten pretty good at getting Castiel hooked up with the NG tube and found it was easier to get him hooked up then get Gabriel’s bottle.

They were keeping Gabriel on liquid food, per Ellen’s orders, until the angel had reached a healthier weight. Already, the skeletal look both angels had was filling out.

It was easy for the officers to pay more attention to Gabriel, as he was much more energetic and noisy. Though they didn’t mean to, they sometimes ignored Castiel, forgetting that he was mute.

After Gabriel was given his bottle and fell quiet, focused on eating, Castiel began squirming uncomfortably. He stood up and waved at Donna, trying to get her attention, but her back was turned. Huffing softly, he picked up a stuffed animal and threw it, but it fell short. He repeated this process a few times, trying to hit Donna to get her to turn around, but he didn’t have the muscle mass to throw the toy far enough.

“Donna!” Gabriel called, noticing his brother’s struggle. She turned around, looking at him, and he pointed to Castiel, who was, at this point, standing with tears welling in his eyes.

“What’s wrong, Castiel?” She asked. He pointed to his belly with a pout, his dark lashes clumping with tears as his discomfort grew and turned into pain. “Are you full?” The fledgling gave an unhappy nod, watching as Donna went to turn off the pump and found that the settings had been changed to give him way more food than he was used to.

“Poor baby,” Donna cooed after unhooking the tube and cleaning it. “Someone gave you too much to eat. That hurts, doesn’t it?”

Castiel nodded with a soft whimper as she picked him up, bouncing him gently. He buried his face in her neck and she smoothed a hand over his hair, feeling his pained tears against her skin. Despite her attempts to calm him, Castiel eventually dissolved into sobs, curling reflexively with his tiny hands wrapped around his middle.

It was around then that Jody came in. She hurried to Donna’s side when she noticed Castiel crying and took the baby and tucked him against her body just in time for him to spit up. He’d spit up occasionally, which was unusual for a fledgling of his age, but his unexpected overfeeding had filled him up more than he could handle.

“Aw, okay buddy,” Jody sighed, grabbing a spit rag from the bucket on her desk and put it on her shoulder, then maneuvered Castiel so his head would be on the rag then started patting his back as more formula dribbled out of his mouth. He still fussed, his belly still hurting, but he was feeling slightly better. “What happened?” Jody asked Donna. “Why was he crying?”

“The pump settings had been changed at some point and it gave him way too much. I think he was trying to get my attention earlier by throwing the toys around, but Gabriel was the one that did it and by the time he did, Castiel was already starting to cry.” Donna sighed. Taking care of two special-needs angels round-the-clock was weighing on even her. “I feel really horrible about it. I’d only turned my back for a few minutes, but it was long enough that he was having problems.”

“Donna, no.” Jody spoke sternly as she bounced Castiel, whose cries had quieted and now he was whimpering as he lay against the spit rag, his eyes closed. “Do _not_ blame yourself. The settings were changed, whoops. We’ll just make sure that they are kept where they should be and pay more attention to him while he’s feeding. Look at him, he’s calmer now. He’s still fussy, sure, but that’s okay. He’ll be fine.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Donna whispered, then laughed a little. “How is it that you’re always right?”

“I have experience with babies,” Jody grinned sadly. “We accidentally overfed Owen sometimes, cause he loved to suck on his bottles and never stopped until he couldn’t keep it down.”

“Right,” Donna looked away momentarily, her gaze going to the pen where Gabriel was standing, watching the two women interacting with his tiny brother. “How… How are you doing? I know it’s been a year, but-”

“Donna, I’m fine. It hurts to think about them, but I’m alright. I can’t not be, not with these guys depending on us.”

Jody’s son, Owen, and husband, Sean, had died in a drunk car accident a little over a year ago. After their joint funeral that she’d planned on her own, she threw herself entirely into her work. There was a time where she hardly ate or slept and was pulled out by Donna insisting they take a weekend and go to a resort. They’d not known each other very well up until then, but since, Donna had become one of Jody’s most cherished friends. The drunk driver that had hit their car had been caught and with Sam’s help, he was locked up under two counts of manslaughter and one of driving under the influence.

“Alright, he’s out,” Castiel had fallen asleep, a frown still twisting his delicate features. “Help me get Gabriel down.”

She set Castiel down and tucked his blanket around him, watching as Donna reached for Gabriel, who scooted to the other side of the pen, a small smile dancing on his lips. Donna tried to reach for him again, but he moved out of reach again. This happened one more time but this time, he’d moved into Jody’s reach. She scooped the angel up, squealing giggles escaping his lips as he kicked his feet through the air. His wings twitched a tiny bit as Jody spun around then tossed him in the air a little, catching him easily. Both women saw it but didn’t say anything. It was the most movement they’d seen from the damaged limbs and they weren’t going to call attention to it, not in Gabriel’s earshot.

He was very sensitive about his wings.

They eventually got him down for a nap and left the room, Jody turning the light off and mostly closing the door. She then turned to Donna, speaking in a low voice.

“You saw that, right? His wings move?”

“I saw it. Do you think that means he’s recovering?”

“I think it means they won’t be totally useless. We should probably ask Ellen.”

Donna nodded and they called the vet, explaining the situation.

“Do you think it means he might be able to fly?”

Ellen hesitated. “I think it means that he has feeling, which is the first step. It’s going to take a lot of rehabilitation and work to get them anywhere near the muscle mass he should have. Malnutrition and the damage done to them means that he’s basically wearing a heavy backpack right now. We’ll have to work with him to get his muscles back the way they should be so he can move the wings. After he’s strong enough to do that, we’ll talk about flight, which we can only do after his feathers grow back too. It shouldn’t take too long, I thought I saw some budging feathers this morning when I checked them over today, so we’ll see. The cuts aren’t fully healed, so growing feathers will get in the way. We’ll have to keep his wings constantly clean and with his hatred of anyone near them, that’ll be difficult.”

“Do you think he’ll get over that fear?” Jody asked. They both heard Ellen sigh.

“That’s a better question for Ash. I don’t really know.”

Through the next days, they worked with Gabriel on his speech and Castiel on his oral aversion. He eventually began accepting pacifiers and slowly, they managed to get him to bottle feed. He only drank a little orally and they asked Ellen about it during a checkup.

“Well, he hasn’t eaten anything orally in at least a week, probably longer. With someone his size and age, it’s really easy to lose muscle tone. Now, because of all that, he’s lost a lot in his jaw, so he isn’t able to suck on the bottles as well and it tires him out faster. We’re going to keep him on the tube until he’s able to eat completely orally so he keeps getting calories.”

Gabriel's hands were healing nicely and Ellen finally kept the gauze off his fingertips but left the mittens on. His wings, however, were a different story.

Any time Ellen tried to touch them, he would freak out and try to flee. It ended up that Jody would hold him still while Ellen removed the bandages. They were grateful that he couldn’t move them very well because they were big for his age and size, even without plumage. One day, though, he didn’t fight nearly as much. He’d been less energetic that morning, but Jody had thought he just didn’t want to wake up. He’d had a rough night, plagued with nightmares. However, it was when Ellen removed the bandages that they knew to be worried.

The numerous cuts and gashes, which had seemed to be healing well, were red and swollen and when Ellen gently laid a hand on the skin, it was hot. Slight movements made Gabriel whimper and as Jody held him, he buried his face in her shirt. Ellen’s face set and she grabbed multiple supplies from her bag then set to work on treating the wings. Jody didn’t pay much attention, her job was to keep Gabriel still. To make it easier, she’d taken to sitting cross-legged on the examination table with Gabriel backwards in her lap, his back to Ellen.

As she treated the wounds, Gabriel grew more and more tense. When she started working on a gash near the base of his wings, he outright wailed. Jody shushed him, running her fingers through his hair and petting like they’d found he liked. His shoulder shook with sobs as Ellen worked to disinfect the festering lesions and wrap them up. By the time she finished, he was begging for her to stop. Ellen stepped back and Jody rocked the little angel, pressing her nose against his hair. She lifted him from the table and tucked him up against her, whispering soothingly. His cries only quieted when he fell asleep, almost half an hour later. Ellen had left at one point to make sure someone was watching Castiel. Don had taken him to his desk and had the fledgling sitting on his knee, watching the officer do paperwork fascinatedly. Other officers were stopping by to meet the angel. Both he and Gabriel had been kept pretty isolated, most officers only seeing a flash of them as Gabriel ran around, learning the names of things or when going to Jody’s office. Now they had free access to meet one, but most kind of kept their distance when they saw the NG tube sticking out of the small angel’s nose.

Thankfully, the walls of the clinic were pretty soundproof, otherwise Castiel would have either been scrambling to be at his brother’s side or doing his best to get away. In the weeks they’d been living at the station, his nails had grown sharper and more clawlike, as they were supposed to be, so whoever was holding him would have been pretty scratched up and needing to go to the clinic themselves.

“I’m not surprised they got infected,” Ellen murmured, pulling her rubber gloves off with a sigh. “Just that it took so long and that I didn’t catch it till now. I could have sworn that they were fine yesterday.”

“He only started acting off like, just before bed last night,” Jody told her. “He didn’t sleep well, either, his nightmares were really bad. They had him up half the night. The only way I could get him back to sleep was if I held him and only put him back down when he was out. I don’t think you’re much at fault here. Infections can just wait until you don’t expect them, then _bam_ you’ve got a problem. It fits right in with these guys’ luck, too.”

“I know, but it’s almost been a month. They don’t usually wait that long. They were healing pretty well, too.”

That day passed pretty uneventfully. Gabriel slept off and on and had little appetite, obviously feeling pretty bad from the infection raging in his wings. After Castiel rejoined them, just before lunch, he stuck by Gabriel’s side, taking his customary nap after lunch where he drank less out of the bottle than normal.

That night, Jody was woken by something pulling on her arm. She turned drowsily to see Gabriel staring up at her. 

“What is it?” She asked softly.

“Can’t sleep.” He answered, just as quietly.

“Nightmares?” Nod. “Alright, come here.”

She scooped the angel up and laid him down on her chest, tucking his head under her chin. Though she meant to get him back to sleep and put him back in the pen, she fell asleep. It wasn’t clear who was out first, but Donna came in upon the sweet scene, the little angel curled on the usually stern sheriff’s chest. It never crossed Jody’s mind to wonder how Gabriel had gotten out of the pen.

It took a week for Gabriel to get over the infection, another month for both angels’ wounds to be fully healed, and a few days after that, Castiel finally got his NG tube out. He still disliked drinking from a bottle, but would finally do it. Gabriel was being moved on to solid foods and they liked smearing a little of whatever he was having onto Castiel’s lips to give him a taste. Gabriel was pretty good at communicating what he did and didn’t like, so they didn’t struggle with him refusing food and not knowing why.

All too soon, it was time to send them to a shelter.


	6. Chapter 6

“Wow,” Dean muttered after a few moments of silence after Jody finished her story. “That’s… That’s a lot.”

“Yeah. Jody agreed. “They didn’t do too well in the shelter, either. They refused to be caged or split up, which caused the shelter a bunch of problems. Then nobody wanted one special-needs angel, let alone two. Eventually, someone wanted to try to take Gabriel, but the moment they tried to leave, they both absolutely flipped out. They left Gabriel there and decided to get a different,  _ normal _ angel. Someone else tried to take both, but returned them after a few days, saying they were too feral and they couldn’t stay. Eventually, the shelter called us saying we have 36 hours to find them an owner or they’d be euthanized. That’s when I remembered that Sam owed me a favor and I called him. He took them, thankfully, and I helped get them used to the environment, but they took to him pretty well.”

“They seem like they’ve recovered pretty well.”

“Oh, they really have. You should have seen Gabriel before he got sick, though, he was so cheerful and bubbly. He loved talking to people and it was absolutely adorable. I hate that he’s so miserable now.”

“Yeah, and his fever keeps going up and down. He was pretty good after we saw Sam yesterday, but by the end of the night it was back up again. This is only my second day with them, but it’s been a battle with that fever.”

“I can imagine,” Jody grimaced. “When he had that infection in his wings, he got feverish and bounced all over the place. Sometimes he was energetic, sometimes he was so sluggish he wouldn’t get out of bed unless someone physically picked him up. There were some days his feet didn’t hit the floor. How long has he been sick?”

“I think Sam said it’s been a week?”

“That sucks. He’s got to be miserable.”

“Oh, I can assure you, he really is. I'm trying my best to help him, but nothing lasts."

"Poor guy," Jody murmured. "Well, I'm meeting up with Ellen and Jo in an hour for lunch, if you want to come with. I'm sure they'd love to see them again."

"I'll think about it-" Dean was cut off by the unmistakable screams of an injured fledgling. The two jumped from their chairs and raced out of the office, only to nearly run into an officer carrying the screeching creature. 

"Dean, go check on the ones out front. Joseph, tell me what's going on," Jody immediately slipped back into her authoritative position, snapping orders effortlessly. Dean quickly obeyed, hurrying to the front where the pen he'd left Sam's angels was. 

He found them pressed up against a corner of the pen, Gabriel’s body and wings shrouding both him and Castiel in a feathery shield. He could tell that the angels were shaking and when he crouched down near them, he could hear them whimpering.

“Hey, guys,” He whispered. Gabriel flinched and clung tighter to Castiel, his feathers fluffing.The other three angels were standing nearby, bewildered expressions on their faces.

“Gabriel, it’s okay,” Dean tried again. Given what he now knew about their history, he could only assume that the screaming was bringing back old, bad memories. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you here. You’re safe here.”

Gabriel stayed, frozen, unresponsive to Dean’s attempts to calm him. His golden feathers were fluffed up and his wings, disproportionately big, were wrapped around him and his brother. It took nearly a half hour of coaxing to convince the angel to unfold his wings and when Dean tried to pick the two up, they flinched away from him.

“Guys, you know I’d never hurt you, right? I would never hurt you.”

It was Castiel that allowed himself to be picked up first. As Dean bounced the little one, Gabriel stayed curled up in the corner, knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around his calves, head down. His wings were fluffed and curling around him, the golden feathers standing on end. Through the thin feathers, Dean was able to catch sight of some nasty scarring, which he could only assume came from when his wings were so terribly torn up from the farm.

Dean could feel Castiel shivering, even though he’d allowed himself to be held. His wings were twitching and puffy and he held Dean’s shirt in tight fists, head buried in Dean’s chest. The blond angel that had chirped at Gabriel before moved to his side. Balthazar, Jody had called him. He chirped softly at Gabriel and after a few seconds, he made a small, hoarse  _ chirrup _ sound in reply. The two spoke a little then Balthazar looked up at Dean. 

"He's scared," He said. He had an accent. French, maybe? He paused when Gabriel chirped again. "It reminded him of the Bad Place before Miss Jody rescued him."

“The farm?” Dean regretted saying it when Gabriel and Castiel flinched, but the tawny-haired angel nodded. “You know I’m never going to let you go back there, right? It doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“But I thought I was there,” Gabriel whispered. Dean could hardly hear him and crouched down with Castiel on his leg. “I was there again ‘n Cassie was being drownded again ‘n she was hittin’ him. They hit us lots.”

“Aw, hey, look at me.” After a moment, Gabriel lifted his head, whiskey eyes glimmering with unshed tears. The feverish haze still marred the color and his shoulders shook with another cough. “I will never hit you and I’ll make sure Sammy doesn’t either, okay? If I can control it, you’ll never be hit again, okay?” Gabriel nodded and Dean shifted. “Can I pick you up now?” The angel shrugged.

“I don’ wanna stand up.”

“Alright,” Dean shifted Castiel to the ground. “Stay,” He ordered then stood, scooping Gabriel up from the pen, still in his huddled position. He shifted the child to lay on his back, wings hanging through a gap between Dean’s arm and body. The angel turned to face Dean’s shirt, one wing now laying across his arm. Dean stroked his hair and the little one shuddered. Before he knew it, he’d begun to cry.

“I don’ wanna go back,” He whispered. His voice was almost gone, despite his lack of use from it due to his painfully sore throat. “I don’ wanna go back nowhere.”

“You’re not gonna go back,” Dean soothed the shaking angel. He wiped a tear from his small cheek and rocked him a little. “You’re going to be just fine.”

“Promise?” Gabriel turned his head to look up at Dean, a pout on his lips. 

“Promise.”

The angel relaxed a little and Dean rubbed his back below his wings, taking extra care not to touch the feathery appendages. A while later, Jody came back out.

“So what happened?” Dean asked. She shook her head.

“Poor thing was only like, two months old. Can’t even talk yet. We’re not sure what happened to him but he’s real torn up. Looks like he was whipped, almost, or attacked with a knife. Not quite bad enough to call Ellen, but pretty close. He’s stitched up now, and resting, but he’s not asleep.” She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s weird. Tessa came back and he flinched and growled at her like Gabriel does. There was a little damage to his wings, like he’d been plucked a little. How are they? Did something happen?”

“Gabriel and Castiel were real messed up when I came out. Gabriel was huddled around Castiel, almost like he was protecting him. Wings spread out and everything. Eventually I managed to pick up Castiel and Balthazar managed to get Gabriel talking. Apparently the screaming reminded them of-” He was about to say ‘the farm’, but remembered the angels’ reaction. “Of where they came from and it triggered some type of vision or PTSD and Gabriel thought he was back there. Castiel might have too, but he spent less of his life there so I guess it didn’t affect him as much?”

“Must not have,” Jody murmured, bending down and picking Castiel up. The little angel’s wings fluttered as she did so and she smiled at him, running her fingers through his thick feathers. A shudder ran through his body as she did so and he buried his head in her chest, a tiny smile making its way to his lips. “Oh, Balthazar, can you come see if the angel we brought in will talk to you?”

“Sure, help me out?” The blond lifted his arms and Dean lifted him up after shifting Gabriel to his hip. He was heavier than Gabriel, which was slightly disconcerting. Next to each other, though, he obviously had more meat on his bones. He was taller than Gabriel, too. “ ‘Kay, lemma down. I know my way ‘round this place.”

“Attitude on this one, huh?” Dean lifted an eyebrow at Jody as he put the blond down.

“Part of the reason I’ve not been adopted. Shelter doesn’t wanna get rid of me yet either. Too good with the scared babies.”

“Alright, come on,” The group made their way to the clinic, following Jody.

“I didn't realize angels could speak cohesive sentences like that, especially at his age,” Dean commented. “How old is he, anyway?”

“ ‘He’ is a year and five months old,” Balthazar cut in. “Angels can speak good English around a year old. You’ve got two of us, you should know that.”

“I’m angel-sitting, you little turd,” Dean snapped playfully. “These guys are my brother’s, I’m just taking care of them while he can’t.”

“And why can’t he?”

“Cause he’s hurt.” Balthazar was quickly becoming irritating. Dean was only just getting used to the idea of taking care of and holding angels and this one was mouthing off to him as though he wasn’t basically just a toddler. “And he’s in the hospital. Not that that’s any of your business.”

Balthazar opened his mouth to reply but Jody cut him off.

“You two, calm down,” She ordered. “Balthazar, quit annoying him. Dean, you’re letting your temper get away from you while interacting with a  _ baby _ . Get ahold of yourself.”

Balthazar huffed and crossed his arms, glaring at the wall as Jody opened the clinic door with her hip, Castiel still in her arms. As the three adults walked in, a small, bandaged angel looked up. He was accompanied by Joseph, the officer that had brought him in. Balthazar immediately crawled up the examination table, gray wings fluttering. Dean felt Gabriel’s head plunk against his side as they watched Balthazar and the little one chirp to each other. 

The little one was lying on his stomach, face pressed against his arms. His short dirty blond hair was ruffled and his downy wings, which were shades of brown, were spread across the table. His face was covered in stitched and bandaged cuts, the blood oozing from them having been cleaned off as Jody had patched him up. He and Balthazar held a short conversation and seemed as though they were finished, but when Balthazar went to translate, he interrupted him, speaking some more. 

“Well, at least he’s talking,” Dean murmured. “You said Gabriel and Castiel didn’t when you got them?”

“Castiel doesn’t talk,” Jody replied. “Selective mute, I told you that. Gabriel… He hissed and growled and chirped but we didn't think to ask one of the older angels coming from the shelter to translate. It was difficult to know what they wanted before he started speaking, but after, it was fine.”

“His name is Samandriel,” Balthazar eventually said. “He was born and taken from his mother soon after. It was a skinny man with a bad voice that did it- What was his name?” Samandriel gave a little chirrup and Gabriel, who hadn’t been paying attention before, stiffened, sitting more upright. In Jody’s arms, Castiel was having a similar reaction. “Alastair. That was his name.”

Castiel squeaked and pushed his face against Jody’s shirt. Gabriel tucked himself against Dean’s arm. Dean could feel him shaking.

“Who was this Alastair?” Dean asked, noticing how all three angels flinched. Balthazar watched them in confusion, then turned and chirped more. Samandriel replied.

“A Bad Man. He hurt Samandriel, a lot. He clipped his wings and filed his teeth and pushed his face in water and didn’t let him speak and kept him caged.”

Gabriel chirped, the sound rough and painful. Samandriel shifted his gaze to the oldest angel and replied. Castiel watched their exchange and bolted upright, almost falling out of Jody’s arms at one point. Then, surprising all three humans and at least one angel, he let off a string of chirps that were almost too fast to distinguish between where one ended and the next began. It seemed, somehow, that Samandriel understood and he answered him as well.

Dean, Jody, and Joseph waited as the four angels spoke in chirps and whistles. Castiel was speaking the most Dean or Jody had ever heard, but it seemed that Samandriel and the mention of this ‘Alastair’ had opened a floodgate. Eventually, though, Gabriel’s broken voice gave out on him and he dissolved into a fit of coughing that Dean eventually had to use the inhaler to stop. Afterwards, Castiel had retreated back into his shell and was no longer making noise. Gabriel was exhausted, lying limply against Dean, shuddering with held-back coughs.

“What were you guys saying?” Jody asked Balthazar, now the only angel in the room that could speak.

“Talking about Alastair and someone named Ruby. They ran the worst of it, it seems. Ruby…” Balthazar cut himself off with a shake of his head. “Makes me sick. They didn’t even say what she did but….” The angel shuddered. “We communicate in ways you humans don’t understand and that’s one of them. You don’t want to know, believe me.”

“We need to,” Jody urged. “We need to know what’s happened to Samandriel and Gabriel and Castiel and countless other angels so we know what we’re up against. So we can do our best to bring them down.”

“You can’t  _ bring them down _ ,” Balthazar snorted derisively. “You don’t understand. Those angel trade rings you shut down and feel good about yourself for? Hardly the tip of the iceberg. You have  _ no clue _ what you’re up against. There’s no stopping this. There’s no  _ bringing Alastair down _ . He will  _ never _ go down, not even when he’s dead. I’ve heard too many stories about this man, his  _ farms _ , his  _ trade rings _ , his  _ breeding programs _ , his  _ business _ that creates us merely to torture us. He is a snake; cruel, cold, terrifying. And a roach. He fakes his death, you think he's finally gone, but he's still working in the background, waiting for news about him to die down so he can come back out. That farm you raided and got Gabriel and Castiel? One of his. One of many. You'll never be able to track them all down."

"Tell us anyway, Balthazar."

The blond turned his head with a sigh. "Of course. You humans never know when to quit, do you? But fine. Fine. Put them on the table."

"Why?" Dean tightened his grip on Gabriel defensively. 

"So I can molest them," Balthazar fixed a Dean in a baleful blue gaze. "Why do you think, so I can  _ talk _ to them and basically make them relive the torture the were rescued from? That would be absurd."

"No need to be so rude," Jody chided, setting Castiel on the table next to the blond. Dean followed suit with Gabriel and the exhausted angel laid down next to Castiel, who shuffled to the side and put his brother's head on his lap. 

"Plenty of reason, you're asking me to torture them. It'll be worse than the wing clipping, worse than the downing, worse than any beating they've experienced because they will be reliving  _ every moment _ of it again, all at once."

"Okay, wait, what are you going to do?" Dean asked. 

Balthazar sighed. "This goes against everything I was taught," He muttered. His gray wings gave a sharp shake and he shifted a bit. "Angels are able to… What's the term… Mind-link? We don't advertise it for this exact reason. Humans will use it to their advantage. We use it to share information, memories, communicate… Many domestic-born angels either don't have the ability or don't know how to use it, either way, it's useless. In order for me to tell you what they went through, I have to link with them, dig out those memories, and watch them play out from their perspective. At this same time, they'll be seeing the memories too, reliving their earliest days. It will torture them. You thought the condition they came to you in was bad? It will be nothing compared to a replay, after they'd already begun healing." By the end of his sentence, Balthazar's wings were puffed, moving instinctively to an intimidation position that conveyed his anger. Castiel and Samandriel, both younger than him, were looking down, avoiding his eyes. Gabriel, the oldest, felt his own wings fluffing in response. The clinic was  _ his, _ and this newcomer was getting a bit too possessive for his liking. 

"Okay, okay," Jody backed off. "Testosterone battle, calm yourselves."

"Besides the fact that angels don't really  _ make  _ testosterone like humans…" Balthazar trailed off as he chirped at Gabriel, his wings smoothing then flattening across the table, head bowed in an obvious display of submission. Gabriel responded with a growly tone and it took a few more chirps from Balthazar and more shifting of his wings, body language that the humans didn't understand, for Gabriel to calm down and sit back, accepting Balthazar's words. He chirped again and Balthazar nearly toppled off the table. Castiel jolted up too, obvious protest on his face.

“Are you sure?” Balthazar lapsed into English. “You don’t know what will happen, it will be  _ awful _ . Believe me, I’ve done this before-”

“Just do it.” 

With a sigh, Balthazar crawled around Castiel to sit next to Gabriel. The two faced each other and Balthazar spoke once more.

“You will be reliving every moment in that farm, even ones you don’t remember. Ones you don’t  _ realize _ you don’t remember. Are you  _ absolutely positive _ you want me to do this?”

“Yes,” Gabriel whispered. “They did everything to us in that one room. I was there before Cassie, I watched everything they did to him. They were already hurting me before he was even born. I have a more complete recollection.”

“Very well,” Balthazar sighed, then lifted his hands to rest on Gabriel’s head, staring deep into his eyes. The two stiffened as the link was formed then relaxed simultaneously. They sat there, stock-still, as the other five beings in the room watched. 

Dean was struck by how grown-up and wise the angels seemed to be. Despite the fact that none of them were even near their teenage years- Gabriel himself was still nearly two years away- they were shockingly mature. Granted, this could have been because of the trauma he’d gone through, but what about Balthazar?

“Castiel, can you tell if speaking will disturb them?” Jody broke the silence with a quiet whisper. Castiel scooted to sit closer to Balthazar and placed a hand against the blond’s head. He closed his eyes and jolted a little, staying like that for a mere moment before backing away. He shook his wings as he did so, drawing the dark limbs closer to his body.

“Are we allowed to talk?” 

Castiel nodded once as he pulled his knees to his chest, wings circling around him. Dean thought he looked kind of like a feathery, upright bat.

Almost a half-hour later, Balthazar’s hands left Gabriel’s head. The older angel slumped against him and he swayed, woozy. Dean hurried forward and picked Gabriel up, cradling the unconscious angel.

“What happened?” Jody asked. She moved to support Balthazar, but he held up a hand to stop her, using Castiel instead.

“Links are difficult and that was long,” He groaned. “Give me a minute.”

It took more than a minute for him to regain his bearings, but they waited it out patiently. At one point, he asked for water, which he received promptly. Eventually, he managed to sit upright without Castiel’s help, the dark-winged angel backing off and sitting near Samandriel, who was watching with a guarded expression.

“So?” Dean asked.

“Not good. Not good at all.” Balthazar took another sip of his water, folding his legs. “That’s… It’s a lot. I don’t…” He let out a heavy breath. “He asked me to block the memories before I started and I agreed. I couldn’t totally block them, they’re so ingrained in him and his entire personality would have changed. He would have basically become a blank slate and I wasn’t willing to do that. We agreed on muting them, so they won’t be as bad, hopefully. I don’t know what side effects are going to come from this, whether his fears will be dispelled, how well he’ll be able to recall the details, whether he’ll have nightmares or not, I don’t know.” His wings shook, the feathers fluffed slightly as they wrapped around him. “It’s just so vivid…”

“What’d you see?” Jody asked. Balthazar’s head jolted up, an enraged expression on his face.

“You want me to  _ repeat _ it!?” He demanded. “No! Absolutely  _ not _ ! I have no clue how he managed to live with this and not be more messed up than he is!”

“We asked you to do it so we would know what they’ve gone through!” Dean protested.

“You wonder why he doesn’t want to recount it? I just experienced,  _ first-hand _ , what he went through, what both of them went through. If it was me, I would have bit anyone that dared to  _ think _ about touching my wings, especially with his status! You’re lucky Castiel has even made a slight sound since they’ve been taken away from there.  _ You’re _ lucky you even have a hand after what you did this morning, Dean.”

“How do you know my name? And what do you mean by status?"

“Well, besides it being said around me multiple times, I know almost everything Gabriel does now.”

“I thought you were just going through his farm memories?”

“I had to go through almost  _ every _ memory so I could find the farm memories. You have no  _ idea _ the clutter a mind is. There are reasons I was reluctant to do this, and that is one of them. Don’t ask me to relay what they saw because I know for  _ fact _ that I’m going to be having nightmares for weeks.”

“What do you mean by status?” Joseph repeated. Balthazar fixed him with a scornful gaze.

“You humans, I swear. You claim to know  _ so much _ about angels, you claim to  _ research _ us and yet you know nothing! You think us to be savages! You know nothing of our true behavior, much less our hierarchies! And you think you could just  _ order _ me to tell what I saw.”

The three adults were silent, exchanging worried glances. Balthazar was obviously shaken and was trying to cover it with anger. Or perhaps he truly was angry. Either way, whatever he’d seen had shaken him to the core and he was unlikely to ever recount what he’d seen.

“Literal torture. That’s what that was.” His voice grew softer as he curled smaller. “They tortured them in the worst way possible. What Samandriel said? Hardly the beginning. So, so much more and I just likely undid so much healing…” By the end of it, he was whimpering and he dropped his face against his knees. His gray wings came to shroud his head, feathers fluffing as he began to shake. Castiel moved to his side, laying a hand on a wing and chirping softly. Balthazar’s head appeared from the depths of the wings and Castiel gestured to Jody and Dean, who were standing near each other. Jody was taking Gabriel from Dean’s arms, the angel still unconscious. Balthazar chirped once and Castiel nodded. The two then stood, Castiel helping Balthazar walk to the edge of the edge of the table and crawl down. 

Dean, who hadn’t been paying attention, was surprised by a tug on his jeans. He looked down to see Castiel and Balthazar, the latter not looking at him. 

“Do you want up?” He asked. Castiel pointed to the gray-winged angel and Dean cocked an eyebrow. “You sure?” Nod. Dean crouched down in front of the two. “Balthazar, do you want to be picked up?”

The blond angel, still not looking up, lifted his arms in the classic ‘up’ request. As Dean tucked his hands under the little one’s arms and picked him up, he thought he could see tears in his eyes. He tucked the angel against his shoulder and felt his head fall against his collarbone, one arm slung over his shoulder and the other resting against his chest. 

It was awkward for the two for a bit- Dean wasn’t used to holding any other angels but the two traumatized ones he’d been taking care of and Balthazar was independent- he’d not been willingly picked up for more than a few seconds in ages, much less held like this. Not since before he’d been taken. Despite this, he could feel a lump growing in the back of his throat and before he knew it, his breath was hitching, hot tears burning behind his closed eyelids, where he could see torture replaying constantly.

He let out a choked sob and Dean pressed a hand to his back then tentatively moved it to his wings.

“Is this okay?” He asked, running a finger through the soft feathers. He’d barely begun to grow his first pre-flight feathers and was still mostly covered in fluffy down. He gave a hesitant nod and Dean began petting his wings, ignoring the tears soaking into his shirt.

Despite his reflection on how mature Balthazar had seemed, the angel had reverted into a much more childlike need for comfort. It was obvious he’d tried to be strong and comfort himself by shrouding himself in his wings, but they weren’t oversized like Gabriel’s were- He couldn’t wrap them completely around his body. Fledgling wings were small and stubby anyway, and Balthazar had obviously not grown out of that- he was still a child after all and Dean was discovering that. The angel was shaking as he cried, his gray wings shuddering with the movement. Dean leaned his head on Balthazar’s and the angel unconsciously nuzzled against him. He walked around the room, carefully shushing him as Jody watched, bewildered. In knowing Balthazar for nearly seven months, she’d never seen or heard of him behaving this way. He was always independent, bordering on defiant, and rarely accepted being picked up out of the playpen he was too small to get out of. With how he behaved and spoke, it was easy to forget just how young he was: hardly the human equivalent of a six year old.

It took him nearly fifteen minutes to stop crying and he gruffly asked to be let down. The moment his socked feet touched the ground, he was heading back to Samandriel and Castiel, who had returned to the table and waited. His meltdown over, he was back to his normal personality. He chirped softly to the two, Samandriel returning the vocalisation and Castiel merely giving him a slight nod. He came over and settled between the two, leaning over and gently pulling at Samandriel’s feathers. Dean was watching confused, when Jody spoke again.

“Dean? He’s waking up.”

Sure enough, Gabriel was stirring. After a few minutes, he blinked his eyes open with a grimace. Jody set him on the table next to Castiel and he coughed again, the sound painful. 

“Hey, Gabriel,” Dean murmured, moving to the angels. “How do you feel?”

Gabriel stuck his tongue out with a dark look. When he saw that Dean didn’t understand, he grabbed the adult’s hand and pressed it against his head. He was alarmingly warm.

“Sick?” Gabriel nodded and made grabby hands to be picked up, snuggling against Dean’s shoulder and neck when he was.

Dean petted the angel’s hair, carefully avoiding his wings. Strangely, the little one stiffened and sat up in Dean’s arms, twisting to glare at Balthazar and making a raspy sound deep in his throat. The blond looked up from his playing with Samandriel’s wings and flattened his own, peeping in response. His eyes were widened with an innocent look and at Gabriel’s low growl, he turned to show the undersides of his wings, crouching down on all fours like a dog. He turned his head, showing his neck, and it was then that Jody understood. She didn’t speak, though, to avoid interrupting.

Dean nearly dropped Gabriel when the angel turned almost completely around. His surprise grew when the golden wings began fanning out in a display he recognized from the day before, when he’d tried to take Sam’s seat. A growl rumbling in his throat, his feathers stood on end while he rocked forward in Dean’s arms, crouching and looking as though he was ready to pounce. Balthazar inched away from Castiel and Samandriel, dropping the last brownish feather he held, glancing carefully up at Gabriel.

The older angels jumped out of Dean’s arms and scaled the table, landing between Castiel and Samandriel, who dodged out of his way, and loomed over Balthazar. Though the blond was taller and heavier, he cringed away from Gabriel. It wasn’t hard to see why. With his comparatively huge wings flared over his head, despite their only being half-unfolded, the angel had become a domineering presence in the room. In the fluorescent lighting of the clinic, Gabriel’s golden feathers seemed to glow with an unearthly sheen. Jody was sure that if he was full grown and doing this, even she would be intimidated. Balthazar surely was.

The blond was still cowering away from Gabriel, letting out whimpering chirps and a whistle or two. Something he said struck a chord in the older angel and his eyes narrowed. He let out a few whispery chirps and Balthazar replied, his voice whimpery and whining.

After a low hiss and a sharp cuff against Balthazar’s head, Gabriel finally backed off. The blond hesitantly stood, head still bowed. Gabriel folded his wings neatly and gave Balthazar a sharp nod. Only then did the gray wings fold, tucked tightly against his back. Gabriel backed up to the edge of the table and balanced carefully on the balls of his feet. Balthazar waited for a flick of a wing to return to his former position between Castiel and Samandriel and he moved cautiously, as though he was waiting for Gabriel to stop him. The older angel didn’t, however, and instead asked to be picked up again. Dean obliged and was slightly alarmed when the older angel shoved his head against his neck again. He felt slightly warmer than before and it seemed that his little display of aggression had worn him out- within moments he’d fallen asleep.

“Okay,  _ what _ was that?” Dean demanded. Balthazar, still cowed, looked away and didn’t respond. “Balthazar, I’m asking you. You’re the only one here that can tell us what just happened.”

“I recognized some of that as classic submissive behavior in animals like dogs or wolves,” Jody put in. “Is that what was going on?”

“Like I said before,” Balthazar huffed, although his typical attitude was nowhere near as evident. “Angelic hierarchy.”

It soon became evident that he was unwilling to share and they eventually gave up. They spent the next while in the clinic, Dean leaning back in a chair he’d found with Gabriel resting on his chest, the little angel’s wings hanging limply as he slept, one falling off to the side, towards an arm rest. Castiel eventually initiated play between him and Balthazar, Samandriel tentatively joining in later, moving stiffly and sorely. They’d found a ball and were batting it back and forth when Gabriel finally woke up, about a half hour later. Nobody realized for a bit, he stayed quite still, enjoying the proximity to someone without being talked to or expected to hold himself up.

“Alright, I need to get going,” Jody murmured, checking her watch. “If I leave any later, I’m going to be late meeting Ellen and Jo. Do you still want to come, Dean?”

At the mention of Ellen, Gabriel’s head popped up, his facade of sleep vanishing. He nodded at the question, despite it not being aimed towards him, and he pushed himself so he was lying on his stomach but his arms supporting him to be halfway up. Dean thought he looked like he was doing yoga.

“You wanna see Ellen?” Jody asked, this time aiming the question at Gabriel, who nodded enthusiastically, a smile growing on his face. “Castiel? The dark-haired angel followed suit, tossing the ball at Balthazar. 

“Alright, let’s go then.” Dean stood up and grabbed the meds bag from under his seat. Castiel trotted to his side and silently asked to be picked up. Dean rolled his eyes but complied, lifting the bony angel easily. He snuggled up to the man’s shoulder, smiling at his brother.

“Alright, Balthazar, it’s time to go back to the pen.”

“What about Samandriel?”

The smallest angel chirped softly and toddled over, the ball huge in his tiny hands.

“He’s staying here for now, until he’s healed. You’ll see him plenty, the shelter likes sending you over.”

“I heard them say that they might not for a week, though.”

“Well, you meet every angel coming to the shelter, don’t you? To put them at ease?”

“Most of ‘em. I’m the best at it, sure, but there’re other angels.”

“You’ll see him again, okay? I promise you will.”

For some reason, Balthazar seemed upset that he was leaving the fledgling. Samandriel didn’t seem too happy about it either, chirping at Jody.

“Can he stay in the pen ‘till the shelter people come pick us up?” Balthazar asked hopefully. Dean was waiting by the door, the two angels in his arms waiting patiently, one giving an excited wriggle every so often at the prospect of seeing Ellen again. Castiel did this more than Gabriel though. It was obvious that Gabriel wasn’t feeling very well again- besides the flush and haze that were trademarks of his fever, his wings were just hanging limply. He didn’t have them supported much, usually, but he tended to fold them more. Right now they were hardly folded and were just there.

“Fine, he can do that. But Dean and I have to go. Samandriel, do you want someone to carry you to the pen?”

The little one thought, then nodded, chirping at Joseph to pick him up. The officer obeyed and Jody led the group to the front, where she helped Balthazar into the pen and Joseph set Samandriel down. Balthazar immediately started on chirped introductions and Jody, Dean, Gabriel, and Castiel left.

“So where are we going?” Dean asked. “I’ll drive separate and take these guys back to the apartment afterwards. Gabriel’ll probably want a nap by then, he doesn’t look too great.”

“Benny’s, of course,” Jody replied. “Who else? He’s got the best place in probably the whole city.”

“That’s true,” Dean chuckled, shifting the angels. “I haven’t seen him in a while, it’ll be nice to say hi.”

Jody agreed and the two split up. Dean drove with both angels on the front seat, as usual, but had to park somewhat far away from the somewhat large restaurant. As he carried the two to Benny’s, he noticed some people giving him strange looks and remembered that most people didn’t carry their angels. Most people kept them on leashes. They weren’t legally required to be on leashes until they began to get their first adult feathers at around four years old, but many people leashed them beforehand. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone taking their angel somewhere, but carrying them was seen as odd. Dean ignored the looks, though. They didn’t know Gabriel was sick and besides, he didn’t want to risk losing them. They could hardly defend themselves- they were both too young to fly and though Castiel had his claws and fangs growing as they should, Gabriel’s claws were still growing back from being pulled out. Dean wasn’t sure, but he was pretty sure that when his second set of teeth had come in, supposedly when he was just under a year old, they were undamaged from his farm torture. Fangs, though, weren’t enough when neither could speak or fly to call out to Dean for help.

When he got to the door, Jody, Ellen, and Jo were already there and talking. Jo was the first to see him.

“Dean has angels?” She asked, somewhat loudly. Ellen turned and Castiel’s eyes lit up, the black-haired angel wriggling to get out of Dean’s arms and into Ellen’s. The vet quickly grabbed him before he managed to fall and he smiled happily at her, bouncing as she held him. Jo moved to hug Dean, mindful of the listless Gabriel, and Dean bent down to accept the embrace from the girl.

“So what changed your attitude from ‘I’ll never touch an angel as long as I live’ to carrying two down a busy street?” Jo asked. Dean shook his head, laughing slightly.

“Sam asked me to take care of them. Gabriel’s sick and he didn’t want to leave both of them alone. Then he got in a car wreck yesterday and they’re holding him in the hospital and I told him I’d take care of them until he was able to again.”

“Yeah, but…” Jo gestured to Gabriel, whose golden feathers were brushing Dean’s arm. “You hate them, wings especially.

Dean shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s still weird for me to hold them, but after this one fell asleep on top of me like, five times yesterday, I’ve kinda gotten used to it. He sleeps a lot and doesn’t like walking around half the time.”

“What’s his name?” Jo asked, reaching to pet the gold feathers.

“Gabriel,” Dean answered, grabbing her wrist. “I wouldn’t pet his wings. He’ll freak out, most likely, and I don’t want him trying to run away here.”

“What’s wrong with his wings?”

“Remember when I told you about the two angels that came from a farm about a year ago?” Ellen cut in, rubbing Castiel’s wings, his throat rumbling with a purr. “The selective mute that had an NG tube and the one whose wings were so torn up he might not be able to fly?” Jo nodded. “These are those two angels.”

“Really? Didn’t you say that the shelter gave Jody like, a day and a half to find them owners or they’d be put down?”

“We did,” Jody replied. “Sam owed me a favor and I asked him to take them. If they didn’t get along so well with him, I would have likely adopted them myself. They were pretty wary and spent a lot of time hiding under the beds, but Sam was willing to let them get used to them on their own time. After Gabriel decided he wasn’t a threat, he got really attached really quick. It was cute to watch.”

“He has been really good for them,” Ellen agreed. “Didn’t he say once that Castiel was managing full sentences?”

“I think so,” Jody murmured. The dark-haired angel blushed and turned his head as Dean cast an accusing look on him.

“I thought you couldn’t speak!”

“He’s selectively mute,” Ellen corrected. “It’s different in angels and humans, but it’s typically caused by anxiety and whoever hasn’t physically can’t speak to people they don’t know. Castiel was trained, basically, by the farm to never use his voice. When he would accidentally make noise, just after they got them out of the farm, he would flinch and hold his breath. We think that they would hit him if he made noise and he came to expect it, so it’s different in him than most cases I see, not that there are many. Counseling usually helps them overcome it, but Sam opted not to send him to a therapist, especially considering how few angel therapists there are, and chose to help him on his own. You have no idea how much improvement it is that he was able to speak full sentences without expecting pain in less than eight months with Sam. That’s more improvement than I’ve seen in any of the selective mutism cases I’ve had.”

“He’s spoken without flinching today,” Dean replied. “He met an angel from the shelter and he, Gabriel, Balthazar, and an injured fledgling named Samandriel were all talking about the farm and whoever ran it, people named Alastair and Ruby. He didn’t flinch once and he was chirping like crazy.”

“It’s true, I was shocked,” Jody confirmed. “He was completely at ease right then.”

“Well, that’s good,” Ellen murmured, shifting Castiel to look up at her. “You were speaking?”

Castiel hesitantly nodded. Ellen smiled and ruffled his hair. “That’s good, honey. That’s good.”

“Hit ‘n drowned,” Gabriel whispered. Dean was the only one who heard and shifted the sick angel. 

“What’d you say?”

“They hit him and drowned him when he spoke,” He repeated. “They didn’t like him being noisy.”

“What about you?”

Gabriel coughed and shook his head. “I moved my wings too much ‘n they were too big with feathers so they pulled them out ‘n tried…” He cut himself off with a whimper, curling his legs closer to his body. His gaze was distant and he stared off to nowhere. Shaking his head, his breathing picked up, eyes wide with horror. Dean rocked the shivering angel, trying to calm him down.

“It’s alright, you don’t need to say. We just won’t touch your wings so whatever they did, you don’t think we’ll do. Is that okay?”

Gabriel gave a shaky nod, tucking his head in the curve of Dean’s neck. He’d curled into a little ball, as tiny as he could go, which was pretty small. Dean was supporting him with one hand, the position too awkward to reach up and hold him with both.

“Why don’t we go in?” Jo suggested. “We’ve been standing out here for ages.”

They agreed and entered the restaurant, quickly being seated with two angel menus. Benny liked angels and loved catering to their tastes, which were mostly natural ingredients. Soon, they ordered and their food came quickly. As they ate, a voice interrupted them.

“Is that Dean Winchester with  _ angels _ !?” Benny Lafitte, Dean’s friend from Louisiana, came over. He rested his hands on the table and leaned against it, smiling. “Is that  _ two _ ?”

“They’re Sam’s,” Dean groaned. “Why is everyone so shocked that I'm doing a favor for my brother?”

“Because you  _ very loudly _ proclaimed that angels creeped you out,” Ellen smirked, watching Castiel give Gabriel a piece of cantaloupe. The sick angel hadn’t been eating so Castiel had decided to feed him himself. “And that’d you would never willingly hold one.”

“Benny, he came down the street  _ carrying _ both of them!” Jo cut in with a huge grin. Benny let out a loud laugh.

“Oh, that’s wonderful! I’ll have to mark it on my calendar.”

Gabriel looked up at the Louisianian accent and waved shyly at Benny.

“Heya, Gabe,” The man greeted. Sam had brought them to the restaurant plenty of times that he knew both of the angels. “Hey there, Cas. You got words today?”

“Hello,” Castiel mumbled. Benny, standing right next to him, leaned down a little and patted his hair.

“Thanks, buddy. Good job.”

He looked up to see everyone but the angels looking at him confusedly.

“What? Sammy brought them here enough that Cas is familiar enough to say hello some days. Sometimes he has his words and sometimes he doesn’t, but when he does, we’re proud of him. It’s a process, but he’s getting there.”

It was then that Dean realized that Benny liked taking care of special-needs angels and that he’d mentioned taking some angel psychology courses online when he wasn’t managing the restaurant. Being the head cook and living on the floor above, it wasn’t often that he had the time, but he was managing it, last Dean had heard.

“How’s that psychology course going?”

“Pretty well,” Benny shrugged, pulling a chair from an empty table over and sitting on it, playing with Castiel’s dark hair as he spoke. The angel didn’t seem to mind, closing his eyes and letting Benny do what he wanted. “I’m about halfway through the fourth.”

“How’re the angels?” Ellen asked. “Especially Elijah, how’s he recovering?”

“Elijah’s… Well, he’s having trouble,” Benny sighed. “He’s finally getting back on his feet, but the weight balance is throwing him off so bad that he needs support. I’ve been considering getting him a crutch or cane until he gets used to it. The others though, they’re doing pretty well. I’ve got Duma in the kitchen right now, watching. Once she’s used to the bustle in there, I’ll get her to sit out here, maybe socialize a bit. She needs it. Joshua’s starting to soar a bit and I let Bartholemew take him to the park to let him practice. Adina’s still mourning. I’ve got her and Elijah rooming together, hoping that they would help each other, but it doesn’t seem like it’s working. I’m really not sure what to do for her. She just seems sad and doesn’t want to eat. I’m thinking I’ll have to start getting her up and bringing her to hang out with Duma so she’s not always in bed, but I don’t know if that’ll help or hurt.”

“What are you talking about?” Dean asked. 

“Benny rehabilitates angels,” Ellen explained. “The long-term ones. Elijah, one of them, lost a wing about a month ago and the wound got infected. Benny’s been working with him, helping him get used to the loss. The other angels, Duma, Joshua, Bartholemew, and Adina, they’re all special-needs or rehabers. We found Duma wounded in a ditch about seven months ago. She was nearly dead and terrified of humans, but you said she’s socializing now?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m real proud of her too. It’s been a rough journey, but she’s getting there. Joshua’s case was similar to what I’ve heard about Gabriel. His wings were stripped, cut up real bad. Ellen called me and neither of us thought he’d be able to fly, but he’s getting pretty good. Worked to build up muscle mass, got him flapping at first. And before you ask, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do the same for Gabriel.”

“Why not? You said Joshua had the same thing he did.”

“I said  _ similar _ , not  _ identical.  _ Joshua was shy of people touching his wings, but Gabriel’s terrified of it. That’s only one problem. Joshua’s wings were stripped just before he started flying. He’d already started growing in adult feathers. The biggest thing is that Gabriel’s wings…. He’s let me see some of the scarring and it’s real close to removal scarring. Obviously it wasn’t successful, but it’s in the exact same place as one of the deliberate removals I took care of a few years back in Louisiana. It looks like it was deep, too. I don’t know how many tendons, ligaments, and nerves they chopped and I can’t tell if the cuts were messy or if he healed messy. There’re so many unknowns with him that I can’t tell you if he will or won’t fly again.”

“But would you be able to try?”

“If Sam wants me to, and not for a while. You’d need to start building up muscle mass and tone, but you’ve got around two years before his flight feathers start coming in and he’d be able to fly if he was a healthy angel. I’d be happy to help with that, I really would, but I can’t do anything without touching his wings and I can’t touch his wings unless he lets me. I can’t help until he’s gotten over his phobia of being touched and I don’t know if I can help with that either.”

“But you said you were taking courses on angel psychology?” Jo asked. 

“I am, but there’s a lot that goes into it. There’s a huge difference between how angel minds work and angelic phobias. I can counsel a depressed, one-winged angel to start eating again but I’m lucky to have gotten a human-phobic angel to be able to sit in a kitchen full of familiar faces when she used to flinch at me entering a room too quietly. There’s a huge difference between Duma’s mental case and Gabriel’s. His fear is so deep-seated that it’s basically part of his personality. There’s a chance that I can get him to let me pet his feathers by the end of the year, but his progress is totally up to him and having been raised with so much done to his wings, I don’t know if he’ll ever be completely comfortable with someone touching them. And again, there’s a chance he won’t physically be capable of flying. He’s not able to fully open them, right?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen them extended more than halfway.” It was Jody who responded this time, having spent the most time around Gabriel out of anybody else in the room.

“Exactly. If he can’t extend his wings fully, he won’t be able to generate enough lift to stay in the sky, no matter how big they are. After enough crash-landings, he won’t even want to try and then there’s no point ‘cause if an angel doesn’t want to fly, he won’t. The biggest thing is to assess exactly how much damage has been done and how much is irreversible. That’s if he’s able to conquer the phobia, which I don’t know if he will and I wouldn’t recommend pushing it.”

“Balthazar did do something to his memories, he mentioned that his fears may be reduced,” Dean murmured, glancing at Jody. “Do you think that may have helped?”

She shrugged. “I have no clue. I’ve never seen or heard of the link thing he did, so I can’t tell you if it means he helped or what.”

“What ‘link thing’ are you talking about?” Ellen asked. Benny leaned forward as well, intrigued.

“One of the shelter angels, Balthazar, used some sort of mind-link to go through Gabriel’s memories to find out what they’d gone through at the farm. The plan was that he’d tell us what he saw but he refused to and was really shaken. He’d mentioned that he muted the farm memories and that Gabriel’s fears may be dispelled and that he may or may not have nightmares. I’d never heard of a mind-link before. Have either of you two?”

“I don’t think so,” Benny murmured, thoughtfully. “What did they look like when they did this mind link?”

“Balthazar had his hands on Gabriel’s head and they were completely still, staring into each other’s eyes. Once they broke, Gabriel fainted and Balthazar was really woozy.”

“I think I’ve seen that once or twice, without the touching,” Ellen hummed. “I had an adult angel in at the same time as a fledgling. The fledgling was crying then the adult looked straight at it and a few seconds later, the fledgling had calmed down.”

“Maybe it didn’t have to touch the fledgling cause it’s older? Balthazar’s only what, a year and a half?”

“Year and five months, but close enough. He’s right between Castiel and Gabriel. I don’t really know if it’s because he’s young or if he’s inexperienced or if it was because he was going through memories and not just calming a baby.” Jody sighed and took a bite of her food. “I didn’t even  _ know _ that angels could mind-link.”

“I’ll ask Ash about it, see what he knows,” Ellen put in. “I think he knows angelic psychology better than anyone else nearby. Benny, if you want, I can put you in contact with him so you can learn more about them. Honestly, if there’s anything about angels that you want to know, he probably can tell you. It’s almost creepy how much he knows about them.”

“Wha’ ‘bout ‘Dina?” Castiel asked. His question came out of nowhere, catching everyone off guard, and his words were so slurred that it was hard to tell what he’d said.

“What was that?” Dean asked. Castiel rolled his eyes.

“Wha’ ‘bout Adina? Wha’ happ’n’d to her?”

“I never explained, did I?” Castiel shook his head at Benny’s question. “She lost her babies. The entire brood drowned in the floods a few weeks ago, right in front of her. She couldn’t do anything to save them and the loss has been really hard on her. She doesn’t eat much and I was hoping when I moved Elijah to her room that the company would help her, but it doesn’t seem to have done much yet. It’s only been a few weeks but I haven’t seen any change in either of them in regards to their depression.”

“C’n I see ‘er?”

Benny jolted upright in surprise at the question. At the motion, Castiel flinched with a squeak, hands and wings moving to shield his head as he cowered in his seat. Benny realized his error immediately.

“Aww, Castiel, I’m sorry. I was just surprised at the question. You’ve always been so shy and you’ve never asked to meet any of my patients before. But I’m sure meeting her would be fine. Are you sure you want to see her?”

Castiel shifted his dark wings and nodded slightly, staring up at Benny with fearful blue eyes. He stood up and Castiel cringed away. Benny suppressed a disappointed sigh. Castiel had been doing so good.

“Dean, if you could bring Castiel, we’ll go up and see her. Perhaps the presence of a fairly healthy fledgling may help her.”

Dean nodded, picking Castiel up. At the feel of familiar hands lifting him, he uncurled a little. When he left Gabriel’s side, the older angel looked up.

“Don’ go,” He rasped. His head was resting against the side of the table and it was clear he was exhausted, but he didn’t want Castiel to leave him. Dean remembered how Jody had mentioned that they didn’t like being away from each other. Dean glanced at Benny then picked Gabriel up as well.

“Do you think it’s okay if I bring Gabriel too? He’s pretty sick though.”

“I suppose,” Benny murmured. “I don’t know what it’ll do to Adina, seeing a sick fledgling, but maybe she can help…” He trailed off thoughtfully, leading Dean and the two angels through the kitchen and stopped to introduce them to Duma, who was sitting on a wooden stool in a corner, her red-hued gray wings folded neatly behind her. She greeted Dean shyly, giving the fledglings a slightly warmer welcome, and the four moved on, going up the flight of stairs that opened from the back wall of the kitchen. They were led past several closed doors, many with stylized names on them, to stop in front of a blue one with the names Elijah and Adina hanging on it. Elijah was written in marker, the letters red with black outline, while Adina was in simple pencil.

“I have them write out their own names and decorate them however they want when they get here,” Benny explained. “They’re allowed to redecorate whenever they want. The ones that don’t really care or don’t have the energy or motivation tend to just do it in plain pencil. Elijah had started off with pencil but asked to redo his a few days ago. Adina….” He stopped with a sigh. “She scribbled down the letters and declared herself done. She’s not doing very well. Let’s just go in.” With that, he knocked firmly on the door with two knuckles, then turned the knob without waiting for a response.

“I don’t have locks on the doors but I do knock so they know I’m here. One of the rules is always knock when you want to go into someone's room. Not everyone responds, but those that do will.”

The room was dark when they entered, the one window covered with a thick curtain. Benny flipped the light on, making it easier to see. It was obviously a split room. Unlike Gabriel and Castiel’s shared room, this was only one color, but it had two beds. One side of the room was mostly clean while the other was messy. The clean side had hardly any personalization while the messy side, along with the clothes and blankets strewn across the floor, had drawings taped up to the wall. A dark head lifted from the messy side’s bed, the rumpled blankets shifting.

“Oh, were you taking a nap Li? Sorry about that,” Benny apologized. The angel, a male, sat up. He wore a plain red t-shirt and had a single chocolatey brown wing. 

“It’s okay. Who are these?”

“These are Dean, Gabriel, and Castiel. We’re actually here for Adina and were going to introduce them to her.”

“They’re fledglings. Do you think they’ll help her?”

“She lost hers, so it’s worth a try. But if you were taking a nap, we can move to the hallway.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I need to get up anyway. Maybe I’ll try to get a snack or something.”

“Need a hand?”

The angel crawled out of his blankets, pushing some off his lap and onto the floor. He stared down at them for a second as though he was going to pick them up but didn’t, instead swinging his legs over the side and pressing his hands against the mattress.

“I think… Maybe….” He was about to deny Benny’s offer for help, but when he pushed himself up, he was off-balance and toppled back onto the mattress.

“The answer is yes,” Benny went over to Elijah and helped him right himself. He then let the angel use him for balance as he stood, letting him slowly let go as steady himself. “What did I say about the wing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, balance.”

“Not balance. Equalize the weight.”

“Right.” Elijah shifted his single wing so it lay diagonally instead of flat against his back, the tips of it on the opposite side of his body. This seemed to help him stay steadier. “You’d think wings would be lighter than this. They used to feel lighter.”

“That was when the weight was equal. You were used to that, and now you just have to get used to this.”

“I know. Okay, I think I’m good.”

Elijah walked carefully and unsteadily out of the room, waving hi to Dean and his angels as he passed, one hand on the wall. As he did so, Dean could see that the back of his shirt was cut out and where his other wing should have been was just a bandaged lump.

“Okay now,” Benny walked over to the other bed. “Adina? Honey, can you sit up? I have someone here to meet you.” There was no response but a slight rustling and Benny sighed, gesturing for Dean to come over. He did and looked down.

There was a female angel- Adina- in the bed. Her body was shrouded by her speckled tan wings and a few blankets, though most had been kicked around to form a border around her. She had wavy dirty blonde hair, body Dean couldn’t tell what she looked like otherwise- her face was pressed against a pillow.

“Adina, please look up. I have someone for you to meet.’ He then directed his sentence to Dean. “Give me Castiel.”

Dean handed the dark-winged fledgling over and adjusted his grip on Gabriel.

Adina shuffled for a little and lifted her head off the pillow, not looking at Benny. “Who would want to meet me?” She asked, her voice monotone and dead. “I killed my babies.”

“You did not kill them, the water did. Please, at least say hello to him.” Benny had, by now, pulled a chair that was sitting between the bed’s up and had taken a seat, Castiel now on his lap. The little angel had one arm around the man and stuffed four fingers on his other hand in his mouth as he waited for Adina to turn. She eventually heaved a sigh and turned to look at Benny, not originally seeing Castiel. When she did, though, her eyes widened and she sat up. Her eyes flickered to Benny, a question written all over her face.

“This is Castiel,” Benny introduced. “Would you like to hold him?”

“Yes, please,” Adina breathed.

“Is that okay?” Benny asked Castiel. “If I give you to her?” The little angel nodded and Benny lifted him over to Adina, who accepted him and tucked him against her stomach, stroking his hair.

“Hi, little one,” She murmured. “Hi there,”

Castiel gave her a little smile around his fingers and laid his head against her, curled up in her arm. He was really quite small for an angel.

“He’s selectively mute,” Benny explained. “He may not be able to speak to you.”

“Not verbally,” Adina replied. “Mirabel was selectively mute.” She lifted her hand to rub his cheek, gazing into his deep blue eyes. The two fell still for a few seconds, a great calm seeming to steal over Castiel. When Adina began moving again, Castiel began blinking tiredly, sighing heavily and snuggling against her. Within moments, he fell asleep, Adina still cradling him.

“What’d you just do to him?” Dean demanded. He shifted Gabriel a little bit and the alarm in his voice caused the sick angel to twist around. He stiffened when he saw Castiel being held by an unfamiliar angel, and  _ sleeping _ .

“Nothing,” Adina murmured. “He’s just sleeping. He was tense and scared and I soothed him.” She then looked up at Dean and saw that he, too, was holding a fledgling. She regarded them for a second. “He’s sick, isn’t he? He looks feverish.”

“He is,” Dean replied gruffly as Gabriel shifted a little, staring at his sleeping brother. He twitched his wings, a miniscule movement, but the light from the lightbulb caught it and caused his golden feathers to glitter and shine, only momentarily. Adina’s eyes caught the shift, however, and she stared at Gabriel with new interest.

“I may be able to help. If I may?”

She set Castiel next to her, on his stomach. Peacefully fast asleep, the movement didn’t bother him. Dean hesitantly moved towards her after Benny nodded. When they got closer, Gabriel leaned a bit, still clinging to Dean’s shirt, but enough to sniff her hands. He must have decided she was safe because he allowed her to take him from Dean’s arms.

“Do not, under any circumstances, touch his wings,” Dean ordered.

“He was stripped,” Benny explained. Sorrow filled Adina’s gaze as she rested a few fingers against the tawny-haired angel’s forehead.

“Poor baby,” She crooned. “Who would do such a thing to a pretty fledgling like you?” She didn’t expect a reply as she went on with her soft muttering.

“We can go,” Benny murmured, touching Dean’s arm.

“Are- Are you sure?”

“Of course. I trust her.”

“Yeah,  _ you _ might. Sam’ll kill me if anything happens to them, and I don’t know her.”

“Dean,” Benny fixed his old friend in a stern gaze. “She’s already lost three fledglings. She won’t lose two more.”

Dean heaved a sigh then agreed. “Fine.”

“Come on, let’s go meet the others I have here.”

Dean allowed himself to be led from the room and into another that didn’t have a door. Inside were three angels, all sitting around a table. One, Elijah, was eating while another had a book in front of her. The third didn’t have anything and was just sitting there. They were all adults.

The female with the book nudged the male that didn’t have anything as Benny and Dean walked in. The three angels looked up as they walked in.

“Guys, this is Dean,” Benny introduced, moving his hands as he spoke. “He brought two fledglings that are with Adina right now. Dean, these are Josiah, Rebecca, and you already know Elijah.”

“Hi,” Dean greeted, somewhat awkwardly.

“Josiah’s deaf so we sign for him,” The female, Rebecca, told him. Josiah, a sandy-haired angel with bright orange and black wings, nudged her.

“I can explain my own disability,” He grinned. His voice was fairly monotone and he spoke with some type of accent. “I was born deaf and raised nondomestic. It was after I had an accident involving a car that I came to Benny’s, a few years ago, and we started learning ASL and verbal speech. I prefer to stay here and help newcomers than go back out to the wild, where I grew up, or get taken in by a new owner. It feels more useful here.”

Dean nodded acknowledgement of his words, finding his story somewhat interesting- It wasn’t often you heard of a deaf angel, especially one that grew to adulthood in the wild.

“I’m just here healing from breaking my wings in a storm,” Rebecca spoke next. “I’m one of the few here that didn’t have a bad experience with humans. I just ended up flying in a storm and hit a few trees. I was lucky that Benny found me on his morning walk. I was drenched and my wings were broken. It wasn’t pleasant. I would have gone with Bart ‘n Josh, but I’ve been sore and didn’t want to risk messing anything up.”

“You can already see what’s wrong with me,” Elijah grinned tightly. “My wing got caught in a trap and in order to get out, I had to literally tear it to shreds. It was better to remove it than leave it useless. I lived in the alleys but had flown out to the woods. It was my first time over there and now I’ll never fly again.”

“Li,” Benny chided gently. Elijah rolled his eyes.

“I know, I know. Now I’ve got you and I’ll be all okay.”

Benny tugged at Elijah’s hair and sat down next to the one-winged angel, gesturing for Dean to do the same.

“The majority of angels I take in have struggles with depression,” He murmured. “Because it’s almost always an injury that brings them here. This is rehab, after all, and it’s hard. But we get through it, because I don’t let them give up.”

“So Benny mentioned that you’d brought fledglings?” Rebecca started. “Are they staying with us or something?”

“While they  _ are _ special-needs, no, I’m not treating them right now.” Benny told her. “Dean and a few friends came in downstairs for lunch and one of them asked if he could meet Adina. I agreed and the two of them are with her right now.”

“What kind of special-needs?” Josiah asked. He’d been following along with the sign that Benny and the other angels did.

“They’re farm angels,” Benny started. All three of them winced. “One of them, his name is Castiel, is selectively mute. The other, Gabriel, was stripped and there’s scarring to suggest that they tried to remove his wings. He won’t let anybody touch them. He’s a lot worse than Joshua was.”

“I didn’t know about that, since I’m only watching them for my brother, and tried to touch his wings. He hissed at me and hid under my bed for a few hours.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Do any of you know something about a mind-link?” The three exchanged quick glances at Benny’s question. Alarm filtered into Rebecca’s gaze and Josiah placed a hand on her arm to calm her. “Apparently, a fledgling made one with Gabriel and, what’d you say, blocked the farm memories?”

“Muted them. He’d said blocking them would be too damaging to his personality, or something similar.”

“Right. Do any of you know if this would help with his touch phobia? So he could possibly start to let someone help him try to fly?”

“It… May,” Josiah responded hesitantly.”Muting memories is difficult, though, how’d a fledgling do it?”

“I’m not really sure.” Dean once again recounted how Balthazar had made the link with Gabriel. And then he later mentioned something about a hierarchy?”

“Damned fledgling,” Elijah growled, his mood dropping significantly. He lifted his glaring gaze from the table to see irritation burning in Rebecca and Josiah’s eyes too.

“Um, how so?”

“Angels have secrets. Things that it’s universally agreed on that we don’t tell humans. The hierarchy just happened to be one of them. Links, too, if possible.”

Dean and Benny spoke with the three angels for a few more minutes before Dean decided to go back and check on the fledglings. They were his responsibility, after all, and he didn’t want to let Sam down. When they got there, Adina had moved her position and had both angels lying on her wing. She was speaking to them, telling them stories, and the two were enraptured. The unhealthy flush that had covered Gabriel’s skin was mostly gone and he looked the healthiest than he’d ever been since Dean had met him. They did soon have to leave though, and Adina gave up the fledglings after Dean promised to bring them by again. They waved goodbye to Adina as they went down the stairs, the female having followed them to the upstairs kitchen where she was warmly greeted by her angelic companions. 

“Do you know if Sam’s thought about applying for disability for them?” Benny asked as they went down the stairs.

“Disability?”

“Yeah. Gabriel would definitely qualify and Castiel may. Main benefit for them is that most angels on disability file don’t have to wear leashes or collars. Instead, they get a metal bracelet with their information inscribed and their type of disability. You might mention it to Sam, once he takes them back.”

“Maybe,” Dean murmured, thoughtfully.

After leaving Jo, Ellen, and Jody, Dean drove the angels back to his apartment. Gabriel’s good health had dropped again, his fever rising, and he spent much of the day lounging listlessly or sleeping on the futon. Dean taught Castiel some card games and regularly dosed Gabriel with baby Tylenol, the fledgling hardly resisting the medication, instead just taking it. He had no appetite, though, and it was a struggle to get him to eat dinner. He ate a few bites, though, then turned away, refusing any more.

By bedtime, Castiel had gotten pretty good at a two-player card game called Speed. Dean found that he knew his numbers, which was helpful, and he was really good at following directions. Gabriel was already asleep when Dean ushered the two to bed. Exhausted, he flopped on the futon and quickly fell asleep himself, thankful that it hadn’t been too eventful of a day after everything had gone down at the station.

This came too early, as the night was about to get much more eventful than he was ready for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter I've ever written, clocking in at a whopping 27 pages and 11,888 words! Question- Do you prefer longer chapters that will take me longer to write or shorter chapters? Please tell me in comments!
> 
> So my updates will be less often. I use a school laptop and they blocked AO3 so while I can still write on Google Docs, I can’t post them on the computer I use. This means that I will still be writing and you’ll probably get multiple chapters in one burst, but I can’t say how often that will be. Most likely it will be in the middle of the night, not like that’s unusual, because then I’ll be able to get on a different laptop and use it. The chapters may also be edited more, because I usually just write and post. I don’t usually like to edit because then I just hate it. That’s also why you see some typos. I write on both laptop and phone and sometimes I mess up words, especially when I’m typing literally as I fall asleep. Please excuse typos that have and will occur!


	7. Chapter 7

Dean was jolted awake when something shook him. He opened his eyes to see Castiel kneeling next to his arm. 

"What?" He groaned, groggy. "Kid, can't it wait till morning?" He rolled to his side, half asleep. Castiel huffed and shook him again, causing Dean to sit up. "What do you want?"

Dean was obviously not moving fast enough for Castiel, something he discovered when the angel huffed again and pushed against his arm. 

"Hold  _ on _ , Castiel, Jesus- Ow! What the shit!?" 

Castiel glared at him petulantly as Dean stared at the angel, incredulous. 

"Did you just  _ bite _ me?"

The angel licked the blood welling from the bite on Dean's finger, unsure of what would happen. Last time he'd bit someone, he'd begun to feel very sleepy very fast. But he needed Dean's attention. 

"Okay, what do you want?" Castiel pointed to the bedroom and Dean frowned. "You can't sleep?"

The angel made a growly noise of frustration. No!

"Gabbie!" He forced himself to say with a flinch. He'd already bit Dean, he didn't want to risk speaking too, but there was no other option. 

Dean quickly got up from the futon, apologizing as the rough movement caused Castiel to cower away. He went to the bedroom, angel tugging impatiently on the leg of the jeans he'd fallen asleep in, and froze in the doorway. 

Gabriel was lying on his back in the bed, fists tightly curled. Tears streamed down his face and it was obvious he was crying, but his sore throat had already ruined his voice and after crying for so long, his mangled voice had given up, reducing his wails to rough breaths. Dean hurried to pick him up, cursing at how high he could feel the fever had gotten- this was the warmest Gabriel had been since Dean had started caring for them. 

Dean carried the sobbing angel from the room, grabbing his laptop from the table and tripping over Castiel underfoot. 

"Out of the way, Castiel, come on," He muttered as he sat on the futon, opening the laptop and topping one handed, his other arm around Gabriel who was clinging to his shirt with tiny fists. 

Castiel, fingers stuffed in his mouth and eyes round with worry, crawled onto the futon as Dean dialed a number on his phone. 

" _ Center Road Hospital and Emergency Care _ ," 

"Do you take angels?" Dean asked without any prelude. "Cause I've got one, he's been sick for a while and his fever is really high. I'm trying to- Kid, hold still- I'm trying to test his temperature but this is the highest he's been and he's trying to cry but he doesn't have a voice left."

" _ We don't often have angels come in, but we can take care of them. Please bring him in quickly _ ."

"I will. Thanks." With that, Dean hung up and turned to Castiel. "I'm gonna put my shoes on then we're going. Grab yours and put them on in the car." The angel slid off the futon and ran to the bedroom as Dean shoved his feet into his boots. He re-emerged as Dean was picking Gabriel back up with his beige trench coat and shoes in hand. Dean slipped an arm under Castiel's and the angel, with his free hand, clung to the backpack strap on the human's shoulder. The three hurriedly left, Dean jogging to his car and putting Castiel in the seat, dropping the bag on the floor. He didn't even try to put Gabriel down, instead holding him on his lap as he drove. At one point, after Castiel pushed his feet into his shoes, he tried to join Gabriel on Dean's lap, only to be pushed away. 

"Not now, I need both hands."

Castiel shuffled to the corner of the seat, hunched slightly. He pulled his knees to his chest, frightened tears rolling silently down his cheeks. He'd only wanted to see Gabriel, let his brother know he wasn't alone. He grabbed his coat and held it to his chest, face pressed against the expensive fabric. It had been a gift to Sam soon after adopting his angels, but it didn't fit the tall lawyer. Unwilling to give it away, he'd kept it and came home from the grocery store one day to find Castiel bundled up in it, asleep. Since then, he'd allowed the angel to hold onto it and it had become something of a security blanket. To his sensitive angelic senses, it still smelled of the human and angels, and if he buried his nose in it, he could still smell the popcorn from the movie night just before Gabriel had gotten sick. Despite the sour scent of illness, it still smelled of home. 

Dean pulled into the hospital parking lot, near the emergency room doors, and parked. 

"Castiel, grab the backpack," He ordered as he turned off the car. The angel barely had time to get a good grip on the back before Dean was hauling him and the bag across the console. He scrambled to grab the coat, dragging it with him by the sleeve. Dean threw it over his shoulder with a roll of his eyes as he hurried across the parking lot, not noticing the drying tears on Castiel's face. 

The black-haired angel reached to his still-sobbing brother, grasping his hand. Gabriel looked at him dully, his whiskey eyes glazed with fever. Dean pressed the handicap button with his hip, hands full of angel and backpack, hurrying to the front desk. 

"Hi, I called about an angel like, ten minutes ago?"

The desk clerk nodded, seeing the two winged beings in his arms. She typed on her computer quickly then looked back up at him. 

"The doctor will be out in just a minute to take him back. Can I have a name for the appointment and can you fill these out?" She handed Dean a clipboard, realizing her mistake when he made no move to grab it. Castiel, however, decided to help and reached forward to take the board. 

"Dean. Thanks," Dean grunted, finding a seat near the corner of the room. He plopped down and dropped the backpack on the floor, shifting Castiel and his coat to the seat beside him. He then situated Gabriel to one leg, arm around him as he tried and failed to fill the forms out around him. Thankfully, the doctor came out soon. 

"Dean?" He called. The adult stood up and took Gabriel over, Castiel following but not paying attention, dragging the trench coat. 

"Gabriel, come on," Dean muttered as he tried to hand the angel to the doctor. The little one shook his head and clung to Dean's shirt, feathers fluffing weakly. "He's gonna help you. Okay? You can let him take you, he won't hurt you and he won't touch your wings. Please, let me give you to him. It won't be too long, I promise."

Gabriel still shook his head, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks. The doctor reached to him and the gold-winged angel flinched away, pressing his face against Dean’s chest despite his awful fever and resulting weakness.

“Come on, what’s the problem?” Dean asked. Castiel, hearing his frustration, looked up and squealed, running to hide behind Dean’s leg, head covered by his coat. “Um… Okay?”

He gave the doctor a glance, the heavyset man looking over at the receptionist. Nobody else in the waiting room was waiting for a doctor, but most of them were watching the situation. 

Dean crouched down, still holding Gabriel, looking at Castiel. He gently shifted the coat, pausing when Castiel held it tighter.

“Castiel, what’s the matter? What’s so wrong with him?”

Castiel merely shook his head, whimpering.

“Come on, I need you to tell me what’s wrong so I can help.”

“Bad… Bad Man was dark too.” 

“Bad Man? Did he hurt you in the farm?” Castiel nodded with another whimper. “And he had dark skin?” Another nod. “Is this like how you and Gabriel don’t like Tessa?” Yet another nod. “Why is that?”

“Dark hair. Long. Like Mean Lady.”

“Okay then. Well, can you look at Doctor…” Dean trailed off, looking up at the man from his crouched position.

“Jennings,” The doctor supplied.

“Right. Can you look at Doctor Jennings and tell me if he’s the Bad Man? Or if he just looks a bit like him?”

Castiel pulled his coat over his head tighter, shaking his head a little.

“Ugh. You know how Tessa’s not the Mean Lady, right? Even though she has long dark hair?” Nod. “Dr. Jennings is the same way. I’m sure he’s not the Bad Man, he just has dark skin. Can you check, for Gabriel? Because he needs help and Dr. Jennings can help him. I can’t.”

Castiel groaned softly and shifted his coat to unconceal one blue eye, which was full of fear-  _ terror _ , Dean noted. The angel scanned Jennings’ face and, after what felt like ages, he finally nodded and moved his coat from his head, wrapping it around his shoulders like a cape, covering his dark wings. 

“Alright, thank you,” Dean sighed. “Now can you tell Gabriel that he’s safe?”

Dean shifted the feverish angel, who had been pressed against his chest. His golden wings were hanging limply and his tawny hair flopped over his sweaty face as he was moved. With effort, he lifted his head and forced his whiskey eyes open. He was curled in Dean’s arms and didn’t seem to care to move any time soon. Castiel moved to be closer to him and patted his hand, which was lying across his stomach. The small angel chirped softly to his brother, the noise gentle and soothing. After a moment, Gabriel gave a weak nod and Castiel backed up, nodding at Dean, who stood up.

“Alright, you can take him now,” He murmured, passing the ill angel to the doctor’s arms. As he did so, a few golden feathers fluttered to the floor, which Castiel quickly gathered. 

“I must say, I’ve had racist patients, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a racist angel,” The doctor said, but it was easy to tell from the way he said it that he had no hard feelings about the situation.

“They were born in a farm,” Dean explained. “From what we can gather, as you just heard, it was a woman with long dark hair and a man with dark skin that hurt them. They were rescued before they were old enough to have developed facial recognition skills, so they only have a few traits to go off of. They were… I’ve been told it qualified as torture and abuse, even by angel laws. They completely shredded his wings up and hurt Castiel so much that he hardly speaks. I was lucky to get what I did out of him. Um, definitely  _ don’t _ touch his wings. He will freak. Lots of trauma there that we’re hoping to help him with eventually.”

“Understood,” Jennings nodded, then shifted Gabriel, who opened his eyes again. “Hello, Gabriel. May I call you that?” The angel nodded weakly, his head lolling against the doctor’s arms. “Alright. We’re going to take you back where I can take care of you. You’re going to be away from Dean and…?”

“Castiel.”

“Castiel, but if you ever need them, make sure to poke me, okay? Whether it’s my hand or side, it doesn’t matter, just get my attention somehow. Also, we’ll tell you everything we do. Is that okay?”

Gabriel nodded again, though Dean wasn’t sure if he’d even heard- he was looking pretty out of it, his eyes unfocused and feverish. Jennings spared a small smile at Dean and whisked Gabriel away. Dean then turned and led Castiel back to the seats, where he sat down, Castiel in the chair beside him, the angel shifting around constantly, half hanging over the armrest.

“Okay, stand up,” Dean ordered after the fifth time of pushing a sleeve off the forms he was attempting to fill out. Castiel obeyed, sliding off the seat, mystified. He watched as Dean took the coat and slipped it over the angel’s shoulder, pushing his hands through the sleeve and buttoning it to the ground, where the rest of the material was puddled up. Dean then sat back down, took the sleeves of the coat, and tied them around his leg, basically immobilizing the angel. Castiel stared up at him after trying to wiggle away, his mouth hanging slightly open. After a few seconds, he plopped his butt on the ground, pouting. Dean could see the lumpy shape of his wings fluttering, the feathery appendages never stopping their movement, not even when covered.

“You know, I did the same thing to Sam once,” Dean told the angel after a while. He was almost done with the forms and had looked down to see Castiel’s grouchy expression. The angel looked up at him, confused. “He was a lot smaller than me then. I think he was four, so I must have been eight. Dad was getting us enrolled at our next school and he was running around touching everything in the office. There weren’t any adults around but I knew Dad would be upset if he broke anything. He was wearing my jacket cause he’d gotten cold and it was big on him so I grabbed him, zipped it up, and tied the sleeves together so he couldn’t touch anything. He gave me the same look you did.”

Castiel obviously didn’t respond, instead trying to move his arms again, unsuccessfully attempting to undo the tight knot holding him captive. Thankfully, it seemed that the farm had never restrained the angels like this, merely caging them. 

Dean finished the forms and leaned down to untie the knot from his leg so he could turn them in. Castiel brightened when the knot was undone, only to return to his pouting when Dean re-tied it onto the chair leg and put the backpack on top so Castiel couldn’t try to drag the chair anywhere. Not that the angel didn’t try as Dean was at the desk. He failed but knew he could have shifted the chair a little if his wings were free.

Dean returned and untied the knot, leaving it undone this time. He watched as Castiel fumbled with the buttons of the coat before giving up and slithering out of the bottom of the coat. Dean picked it up and unbuttoned the coat as the angel ran off, not realizing he’d done so. By the time he’d finished and put the coat on the chair next to him, Castiel had run over to the doors Jennings had taken Gabriel through.

“No, Castiel!” Dean hurried over and grabbed the angel, ignoring his whining protests, and took him back to the seats. “You need to stay with me.”

“But!”

“I know you want Gabriel, but you need to wait. Stay here, okay? I’m going to be right here too.”

With a groaning huff, Castiel obeyed, flopping across Dean’s lap, arms hanging down. Dean shrugged and patted the angel’s back, just between his wings, and pulled out his phone with his other hand. They only sat like this before Castiel wriggled off of Dean’s lap and pointed to the doors, bouncing.

“What, do you want to go back?” Nod. “You can’t, we’re not allowed to right now.” Castiel made some frustrated noise and bellyflopped against the ground, face pressed against the tiles, arms legs and wings spread out like a six-limbed starfish. “Okay, come on, that’s gross. Don’t put your face on the ground. You don’t know whose feet have been there.” Dean hauled Castiel up from the ground, ignoring the fact that people were watching him struggle with the angel. “You need something to do?” Nod. “Alright,  _ thank you _ .”

He pulled out one of the coloring books he’d found in Sam’s house and a pack of crayons. Castiel accepted the things and knelt down, holding one of the crayons in his fist, coloring a dinosaur green. Dean sighed in relief that he’d finally managed to get the little one to stop being a nuisance and pulled his phone back out, checking the time then playing a game.

This time, he was snapped out of it by Castiel accidentally breaking crayon. After staring at the pieces for a few seconds, he threw them against the floor and pulled his knees to his chest, face in his hands. His wings were slightly flared and puffed, shaking a bit. Dean leaned over to look at him, somewhat concerned, then lifted the bony creature onto his lap.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” He asked, prying a tiny hand from the angel’s face. Castiel spun around and thumped against Dean’s chest, knees still curled, and beat one hand against the t-shirt Dean wore. The adult caught the little one’s hands and stopped him. “Whoa, whoa! Come on, what’s the matter? You broke your crayon? That’s fine, I can get another.”

Castiel shook his head and Dean noticed unshed tears lingering in his eyes. Castiel seemed to notice at the same time because he shoved the heel of his hands against his eyes, pushing the tears away angrily. Dean shifted the angel to hug him, rubbing a hand against his dark feathers, causing his wings to shudder. Castiel curled up against Dean morosely and the adult petted him gently, somehow soothing him into a light, fitful sleep. It  _ was _ the middle of the night, after all, and the little angel had likely worn himself out worrying about Gabriel. Soon enough, though, he was awake again and begging for something to do.

“I didn’t bring cards,” Dean murmured. “Otherwise we could play, and I don’t have my laptop for Solitaire.” His hand rested in between Castiel’s wings, the angel resting on his lap. They both looked up, however, when a young woman stepped in front of them, holding out a small red box with a slight smile. Her long brown hair was pulled into a ponytail and she wore an oversized hoodie.

“Do you know how to play Uno?” She asked. 

“Um, yeah? Why?”

“Take the game then. I got it in the gift shop. I noticed your angel was bored and considering how the other looked when you brought him in, it’ll be awhile before Dr. Jennings lets you see him.”

“How do you know about that?” Dean asked, somewhat defensive as he took the Uno box from the girl. 

“I’ve been here for the past couple hours and I’ll probably be here for a few more. Keep the game, by the way. I don’t need it.”

With that, she left, ponytail swinging behind her. She took a seat in the opposite corner of the waiting room, flipping the hood of her hoodie up and shrouding herself from the public. Dean shrugged and helped Castiel to the ground, kneeling and opening the Uno box. He taught the angel how to play, the little one understanding the rules quickly.

“Dean?” Jennings called sometime later. Castiel bounced up and tossed his cards on the floor racing over to the doctor, pausing when Dean called his name.

“Come help clean up,” The adult ordered. Castiel grumbled and came back over, dragging his feet, but helped pack the cards up, obviously aching to get back to his brother. Dean managed to get the cards put up quickly and grabbed his backpack and Castiel’s coat, slinging them over his shoulder, then picked up the angel, carrying everything over to the doctor.

“Come with me,” Jennings led Dean and Castiel down a long hallway. “We got his fever down, but his sickness itself is somewhat confusing. As far as I can tell, he’s in perfect health besides the fever, cough, and sore throat. It’s strange, because usually there’s some underlying issue with a fever that high, but with Gabriel, there doesn’t seem to be.” He paused in front of a door, knocking lightly on it to announce his presence, and opened it.

Inside was a single nurse and Gabriel. The angel was lying on his side, hooked up to a few machines, asleep. His golden wings were covering him slightly, acting as a feathery blanket. The nurse was sitting in a seat a bit away from his bed, merely supervising the angel.

“We’ve got him on saline to rehydrate him- he was pretty dehydrated from the fever, and a fever-reducer. I’m going to prescribe a fever reducer and recommend that you take him off the anti-bacterial he was on. It doesn’t seem to have done anything so whatever he has, it’s probably not bacterial. The fever reducer I’m putting him on is going to need to be administered every four hours.” Jennings spoke as he scribbled something down on his clipboard. “It’s had good results with angels in the past, but one of the side effects is extreme drowsiness. I would expect that he sleeps at least sixteen hours a day, if not more. This sickness has taken a lot out of him and the medicine is just going to make him even more tired. When he’s awake, feed him and make sure he drinks something. It’s recommended to take it with food, so give him a snack whenever he takes it. He’s pretty underweight as you can see, so the constant eating and lack of movement may help with that.”

“How underweight is he?” Dean asked. “Because they came from a farm and I was shown a picture of what they looked like before, and this is a lot better than they used to be.”

“He’s under the 1st percentile for weight,” Jennings murmured. “Do you have access to the pictures of when they were taken from the farm?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean dug his phone out of his pocket. “They were taken about a year ago, if that helps.” He showed Jennings the picture, one of Ellen checking on the two. Jody had told him this was only a few days after the rescue and Castiel still had his NG tube sticking out from his nose.

It wasn’t a pretty picture. The wounds on Gabriel’s wings were hardly scabbed over and were in full view as Ellen had removed the bandages and was letting them air out for a few minutes. The rashes the two had were also visible, slowly healing. Both angels were absolutely skeletal, every bone they had visible. Jody had mentioned being able to see their hearts beating against their chests.

Upon seeing it, Jennings sucked in a horrified breath. It  _ was _ a gruesome sight and, casting a glance to Gabriel, he was relieved the little one was no longer that terrifying skinny. 

Castiel, having no interest in seeing a picture of himself, slithered out of Dean’s grasp and scaled the bed Gabriel was sleeping in. He lied down next to his brother, wings spreading to shroud him. Within moments, he had joined his brother in sleep.

Gabriel was released a few hours later and it was then that Dean realized he had work in only another hour. He groaned, forcing a hand through his hair and Castiel, the only angel awake in the car, looked over at him.

“I have to work,” He explained. At a red light, he pulled out his phone, clicking a contact and selecting  _ call _ . 

“ _ Singer Salvage Yard and Garage, this is Bobby Singer _ ,” Came the gruff answer.

“Hey, Bobby, it’s Dean.”

“ _ Dean? Aren’t you coming in in an hour? _ ”

“Yeah, I got a problem there. See, Saturday, Sam asked me to watch his angels. That night, he got in a car wreck and I’ve been taking care of them since. I just left the hospital with them, cause one’s sick and his fever got way too high. Sam would have left them alone Saturday but didn’t want to leave them alone with the one sick and now I’ve got to give him medicine every four hours. Would it be okay if I brought them in? I’d make sure they stay out of the way, I just can’t let them alone.”

“ _ Wait. You’re saying that  _ you _ have to bring angels with you? _ ”

“Why is everyone so surprised about this!?” He demanded. “Yes, Bobby, I’m taking care of my little brother’s angels. Is that such a big deal?”

“ _ No need to take an attitude, I was just surprised. If you can keep them out of the way, then you can bring them in. _ ”

“Okay, thanks. I need to run by my apartment, then I’ll be in.”

“ _ Wait, you said you were leaving the hospital? _ ”

“Yeah?”

“ _ Emergency Room _ ?”

“Yeah.”

“ _ Go home and take a nap, you sound exhausted. If you were at the Emergency Room, then you’ve been there all night. Come in at 9 instead of 8 and get some sleep. _ ”

“Bobby, I’m fine-”

“ _ I don’t want to see you in this building before 9, Dean. No arguing with me or I’ll tell your Daddy. _ ”

“I haven’t talked to Dad in months, Bobby, you’ll have to find a better threat than that,” Dean chuckled, flipping his blinker on to get over into a different lane. “Besides, I’m an adult.”

“ _ You wanna test me, boy? _ ”

“...No, sir,” Dean muttered. “I’ll stay away. You won’t have to see my ugly mug for a few more hours.”

“ _ Good. Take care of yourself, Dean. _ ”

“When have I ever? Bye, Bobby.”

“ _ Bye _ .”

Dean hung up as he parked in his apartment building’s parking lot. He got out and went around to the other side of the car, pulling the backpack on before picking up the angels. Gabriel was still fast asleep, his head flopping against Dean’s shoulder as he was lifted. He carried everything inside, mercifully not interrupted this time, and set the angels on the futon. He set an alarm on his phone and laid down on the futon, pulling Gabriel closer to him. Castiel crawled over and he wrapped his other arm around the dark-haired angel, falling asleep within moments.

His alarm blaring in his ear, Dean groaned as he woke up. Gabriel was still asleep, cuddled against his chest, but Castiel was nowhere to be found. Dean sat up and turned off his alarm, setting Gabriel back down on the futon. The movement didn’t seem to disturb him, the angel still fast asleep. After a few second’s debate, Dean decided not to go looking for Castiel yet and instead got dressed in new clothes. He was sure the angel was fine, wherever he’d run off to. The apartment wasn’t that big and he was too little to reach the doorknobs yet.

Inside his bedroom, the closet door was slightly ajar. After getting dressed, Dean decided to investigate, opening the door fully. He wasn’t sure what it was that made him do it, but after finding nothing else, he glanced up to see Castiel huddled on the shelf just above his head.

“Hey, Castiel,” Dean murmured. “You okay? You gonna come down?”

Castiel stretched his head forward, inching slightly closer to the edge. He peered down but, seeing how far the drop was, he cowered away. His blue eyes fearfully met Dean’s green ones and the adult could see that the angel was truly afraid. 

“Do you need help?”

Castiel shakily nodded, wings shifting.

“Alright, come here so I can grab you.”

Castiel hesitated, then inched slightly forward. Dean reached up and grabbed him with one-hand, the other not quite able to reach. The angel wrapped his arms and legs around Dean’s arm, claws digging into the adult’s wrist. He clung tightly to him as he was brought down from the shelf, and Dean cradled him against his chest when he was done, patting the little one carefully. Eventually, Castiel calmed and relaxed enough for Dean to put him down.

“Why don’t you go change your clothes and I’ll help Gabriel?” Dean suggested. “We’re going out again, this time for my work. I can’t leave you guys here alone and my boss said I could bring you in. My boss is a really nice man, his name is Bobby. He’s kind of gruff and a bit of a redneck, but once you get to know him, he’s just a big softie. Don’t tell him I said that though.”

Castiel gave Dean a dark look as though he were asking ‘you really think  _ I’m _ telling anyone  _ anything _ ?’. Despite this, though, he obeyed, following Dean to the living room and ruffling through his duffel bag to find a shirt and pants.

“When you find your stuff, go change in the bedroom, alright?” Dean said this from Gabriel’s bag, where he was pulling out a t-shirt that was altered to accommodate wings, like all of the angel’s shirts, and a pair of jeans. Castiel nodded and left, nudging the door almost closed.

Dean quickly changed Gabriel, the angel blinking blearily at the man when he was done, just waking up from all the noise and movement.

“Mornin’, Gabriel,” Dean greeted as he wiggled a new sock onto the angel’s foot, Gabriel watching tiredly. “How do you feel?” Gabriel didn’t reply, not that Dean expected him to. “Well, you’re due for some more medicine in a little over an hour. That’ll be just when we get to my workplace, so I’ll give it to you then get to work. It’ll make you really tired, so you’ll probably fall back asleep.

Gabriel yawned in reply, shifting his oversize wings a little. He rubbed at his eyes then stopped when he saw the growing bruise on the back of his hand.

“You were in the hospital, do you remember that?” Gabriel shook his head, the fatigue clouding his whiskey eyes dissipating a bit. “Well, you were really sick. It was so bad that I had to take you to people that could help you. They gave me a new medicine to give you to keep your fever down. It’s the one I have to give you when I get to work."

Gabriel nodded a bit, poking at the bruise until Dean moved his hands apart, telling him not to mess with it. Castiel soon emerged, his shirt on backwards, wings pinned uncomfortably, which Dean quickly fixed. After ensuring they had things for the angels to stay occupied with- Cards, Uno, and coloring books- Dean took the two and the backpack out to his car. Castiel had grabbed his trench coat again, which Dean slung over his shoulder. After getting them set up on the seat, with the backpack on the floor and the coat up their laps, they left the apartment building, making a quick stop at a grocery store.

“I’m getting you guys some stuff to eat,” Dean explained. “And maybe some more stuff to do. We don’t have much time, but we have some.” He took them inside and got a cart, putting Castiel in the baby seat and Gabriel in the basket. The elder angel stretched out along the bottom of it, chin on his folded arms, eyes half-closed. Dean didn’t doubt that he would be asleep within twenty minutes if he was left alone. Unfortunately for the tawny-haired creature, he didn’t get to go unbothered. Dean spent the majority of their time in the produce section asking what they liked to eat. They ended up leaving with the basket full of two bags of apples, a few peaches, some bananas, and Gabriel using a box of Cuties as a pillow. Dean then took them to the toy aisle and had Castiel pick out games. Gabriel didn’t seem to care as he draped himself over the fruit, but he did point out Legos that, against Dean’s better judgement, he ended up getting.

What could he say? Puppy-dog eyes from two baby angels were nearly impossible to resist. Especially when neither could speak well.

Especially when he’d been unable to withstand Sam’s puppy eyes even when they were kids, and he’d somehow managed to teach these guys how to use them. It didn’t help that they could just pull off that wounded look if he denied tem, as if he’d ripped apart their favorite toy instead of refusing to buy a new one. 

Probably had something to do with their being raised tortured.

Quickly shaking away the melancholy thought that had no place entering his mind in the light of day, Dean steered the cart to the checkout. A quick check of his phone as he waited in line showed him that he only had twenty minutes to get to work- and a ten minute drive. He would have plenty of time to get Gabriel drugged up and Castiel settled in the locker room. It wasn’t the best place to leave the two, but if he thought about it, it would be the best in the garage. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let them stay in the workshop and have to deal with washing oil out of a water-phobic angel’s wings. It was bad enough trying to wash milk off of him.

Sure enough, Dean parked in his typical spot ten minutes before 9. Knowing that Bobby fully intended to make good on his threat of attempting to whoop his ass if he was spotted in the building within the next ten minutes, he opted to stay inside his car, choosing to watch the two angels on his front seat.

Gabriel was leaning against Castiel- Although their positioning made it look like it was the other way around- and was just staring blankly at the glovebox, hardly blinking. His wings were folded to hang around his shoulders like a strange shawl. Castiel was playing with his brother’s hands, tracing lines and designs with his fingers. Occasionally, Gabriel would nudge the younger, a very faint smile glimmering on his lips. The interaction was totally silent save for the quiet rustling of feathers, but it seemed right that way.

And totally wrong to break it and give Gabriel his medicine.

All too soon, though, it had to be done. It turned 9 and Dean had to take the angels inside and get to work. By the time he reached the locker room, Gabriel was out again. Thankfully having the foresight to bring Castiel’s blue blanket, he laid it out on the floor of the locker room in front of his locker.

“Do  _ not _ leave this blanket unless I tell you to, understand?” Castiel nodded seriously, fingers in his mouth. Dean momentarily wondered at the habit. Jody had said the angel had oral aversion when they’d saved him, so what changed between  _ wanting nothing in his mouth _ to  _ sticking his whole hand in his mouth _ ?

Shaking the thoughts away because he could worry about it later, he opened the backpack and pulled out some of the toys.

“If Gabriel wakes up while I’m gone, play with him, okay? And make sure he doesn’t leave the blanket.” This was said as Dean pulled his dark gray-blue jumpsuit over his clothes to prevent them from getting oil-stained. His hands were another matter. Sure, he could wear the gloves Bobby provided- they were good and worked for everyone else. But Dean couldn’t wear gloves while working on cars. He needed to be able to  _ feel _ the machinery. “Alright. I’ll be back in about four hours, maybe less. Don’t break anything if you can help it, stay on the blanket… Take a nap if you want.” Unsure of what to say, Dean kinda just went with it. Thankfully, Castiel didn’t seem to care. Dean wasn’t sure if he’d be able to take the stoic little angel seriously if he were to try to judge him.

With a definitive nod, Dean left the locker room, only to return seconds later, drawn back by the plaintive and panicked cry that sounded the moment the door closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry it took so long to post the next chapter! I swear I didn't mean for it to take so long!
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!


	8. Chapter 8

Dean threw the door open to see Castiel standing on the very edge of the blanket, toes of his shoes just past the fabric. He looked utterly terrified and reached to Dean as the man hurried in.

“What is it? Did something happen to Gabriel?”

Castiel shook his head and pulled at Dean’s hand. Mystified, he let the angel ruffle his hand through his dark hair, then followed as he was pulled to do the same thing with Gabriel.

“Now you have to come back,” Castiel whispered. Dean hardly heard him.

“What do you mean?”

“You  _ have _ to come back. You won’t just leave us?”

“No, of course not. What was the hand thing for?”

Castiel noticed he was still holding Dean’s hand and dropped it. “You can go now,” He mumbled, turning to pick out a coloring book, leaving Dean to wonder at his strange actions. He didn’t have long, though, as he needed to go.

His current project was a totalled 1970 Volvo P1800. It had been brought in about a week ago and Bobby, knowing of Dean’s love of old cars, assigned it to him. The owner had said he didn’t care when it was returned, just that it was fixed up and given the care it needed.

“Hey, honey,” Dean murmured as he walked over to the car, running a hand against her crumpled powder blue side. “Let’s work on you, yeah? Get you fixed up.”

It only took a few minutes for Dean to fall back into his rhythm when working. He loved his job as a mechanic, especially when he got to work on older cars. Vintage, he called them. Or classic.

“Dean!” He suppressed a sigh. Who was calling for him? His coworkers knew better than to bother him, he thought. Nevertheless, he slid his creeper out from under the car to see one of his coworkers coming to his.

“What is it, Donnie?” He asked as he sat up and wiped his hands on a rag.

“Your phone’s been going off. Wasn’t sure if you heard it.”

“Nah,” Dean frowned. “Was it an alarm?”

“Yeah,” Donnie handed the device to Dean and, upon checking the time, he groaned.

“Alright, thanks. I’ve gotta take care of something."

“Is it related to those two angels in the locker room?”

“Yeah, one of ‘em’s sick and needs meds. Who knows about them?”

“Everyone. Bobby explained the situation too.” Donnie’s face broke into a grin. “Gotta say, we were all kinda surprised to hear  _ you _ had angels.”

Dean rolled his eyes, making his way to a sink to wash his hands. “Why is everyone making such a big deal over this?”

“Cause you were very vocal in your dislike. What’re you doing now?”

“One of them’s sick, that’s why I brought them in. He needs meds every four hours.”

Dean left Donnie to get back to work as he made his way into the locker room. Castiel and Gabriel were on the blanket, both playing with Legos. While Castiel was diligently following the directions that came with a set, Gabriel was lying on his stomach, simply putting pieces together and making things.

“Hey you two,” Dean greeted as he entered. Their heads shot up at his voice, faces breaking into wide grins. Dean made his way over to them, pulling two apples from the grocery bags and using his pocket knife from inside his locker to cut them quickly, handing pieces to the two as he did so. “Alright, Gabriel, your medicine is a pill. Do you want me to crush it up or can you take it normally?”

Gabriel opened his mouth to reply then paused, a slight frown crossing his face. Dean quickly saw the problem- he couldn’t speak. He had no voice.

“Shake your head for crushed, nod for a full pill.”

Gabriel nodded and Dean found the pill bottle and a bottle of water, shaking one out and giving it to the angel, opening the water for him as well. He accepted it and took the medicine. Dean chose to stay with the angels and play with them for a bit. Hardly ten minutes later, Gabriel crawled into Dean’s lap and fell asleep, the sudden fatigue brought on by the medicine. Dean combed his fingers through the little angel’s bronze hair as he continued making a Lego eagle, per the instructions.

At some point, Castiel switched the Legos out for coloring books and Dean found himself coloring a blue dove. Castiel looked up from his scribbling a purple hippo and stared at the neat blue. He poked Dean’s hand to get his attention, then confusedly pointed to the dove then the hippo.

“I don’t get it,” Dean told him and the angel plucked the blue crayon from his hand then colored on the hippo picture. He frowned at the scribbled lines and motioned to the pictures again.

“Are you asking why they look different?” Nod. “It’s called coloring in the lines. Here, come here.” Castiel obeyed, shifting to sit in front of Dean, who put the blue crayon in the angel’s hand then wrapped his own around it. He gently lowered the crayon until the tip touched the paper, controlling the strokes to keep the color inside the thick black lines. “You have to be careful when you do it, so the colors stay where you want them. You get it?”

Castiel nodded and used his free hand to tap Dean’s. Dean let go and carefully-  _ very _ carefully- Castiel continued coloring the dove blue. He managed to stay within the lines, mostly, and grinned up at Dean.

“Good job, kiddo,” He congratulated. “I’ve gotta get back to work, but you continue that, okay?”

Castiel nodded again and watched as Dean ever-so-carefully lifted Gabriel and set him on the blanket, balling up his jacket from his locker as a pillow for the little angel, brushing his hair from his face as he got up. He then ruffled Castiel’s hair, remembering his panicked cries from before and grinning as the little angel smiled back at him.

“I’ll be back,” He promised, before going out and returning to his work on the Volvo. 4 hours later, he returned and did the same, only staying long enough for Gabriel to fall asleep before returning to work again. He was getting somewhere with the car and wanted to get her fixed up, well and good.

“Dean!” He vaguely heard someone call but ignored it. “Dean!”

After ignoring a few more calls of his name, he yelped in surprise as a hand closed around his ankle and dragged him out from under the Volvo.

“What the hell, Bobby!?”

“You weren’t listenin’ to me so I needed to get your attention.”

“Okay? What for?”

“Well, besides the fact that we’re closing, you need to get going home. You’ve been here almost twelve hours.”

“And? I’ve had a longer shift than that, I can keep working.”

“Yeah, but your angels can’t.” Dean paused with a slight frown, causing Bobby to roll his eyes. “They’re not used to this, Dean,” He scolded. “They’re hungry and tired and they just want to get home.”

“How do you know?”

“You forget I worked with the creatures.”

It was true. Before Bobby opened his garage, he worked as an angel behavioralist. This was over 25 years ago, and he’d quit because he found he preferred working with cars. Less people to deal with, usually.

“Right. Okay, we’ll get going I guess.”

“Hey,” Bobby caught Dean’s arm as he tried to walk past. “You get some sleep, you hear me?” His gruff voice was slightly softer than normal. “Take care of yourself. I’ve already got one boy sick, I don’t need another.”

“Sam’s hurt, Bobby, he’s not sick-”

“Same thing. You take care of yourself.”

“I will,” Dean promised and it was only then that Bobby released him. 

“Good. Now get.”

Dean chuckled as he washed his hands of oil and other car grime, drying them as he walked into the locker room and stopped.

Bobby had been right when he said the angels were tired- Castiel was asleep, cuddled up next to Gabriel, golden feathers mingled with dark- Dean couldn’t tell if they were black like his hair- as their wings wrapped around each other. Quietly, he moved to them and packed the toys up. Thankfully, they just managed to fit in his backpack but he had to put the remaining apples and bananas- the only fruit he’d brought in from his car- in a grocery bag. He slung Castiel’s trench coat over his shoulder after putting the backpack on, then picked the sleeping angels up, carefully grabbing the plastic bag once he was done. He made his way out to Baby, somehow managing to open the doors and drop the fruit bag in and put Castiel and Gabriel down on the seat before unloading everything else he held into the backseat. He then tucked the coat around the angels and got into the driver’s seat, starting the car.

The drive home was quiet. Dean didn’t turn on any music for fear of waking the angels, which didn’t seem to do much as Gabriel woke up at some point during the drive. The ill angel wiggled an arm free and wrapped in around Castiel’s shoulders, pulling his sleeping little brother closer, resting his head on the younger angel’s.

“How you feeling, kid?” Dean asked, not expecting a reply and not getting one. “You were pretty damn sick last night. Scared us, but you look like you’re doing better.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I really hope you get better soon, get over whatever it is you have. The doctor was confused, said you’re pretty much in perfect health except for the fever and cough. But  _ Jesus _ , kid, if your fever had stayed that high for too long… You could’a died.”

Gabriel blinked in astonishment, drowsiness still lingering in those whiskey eyes of his. He pulled a wing free of the coat and pushed it to wrap around Castiel, shrouding the smaller angel in golden feathers. As he did so, feathers fluttered from his wings, settling gently on the floor of the car. He watched them, concern filtering into his eyes.

Dean made it back home and lugged everything- and everyone- inside in one trip. He struggled to get his keys out and unlock the door but managed it with some help from Gabriel. He set the two on the futon and marvelled at their sleeping ability- it was as if Dean had hardly bothered Castiel. He did worry momentarily, however, that the younger angel would come down with whatever Gabriel had.

‘ _ I’m hungry, _ ’

Dean jumped at the voice suddenly sounding in his head. “What the hell…” He muttered, rubbing at his temple with his fingertips. He must be getting tired. He jumped again at a soft tug on his jeans, looking down to see that Gabriel had gotten off the futon and was staring up at him with a slight pout, those damn puppy eyes working again.

“What do you need, kid?” Dean asked, kneeling down to be closer to eye level. The angel put his hands against his belly, puppy eyes strengthening. “Are you hungry?” Nod. “Alright, let’s see what we’ve got.”

Dean made his way around the kitchen to find he had pitifully little. He hadn’t gone out shopping for real food in a while but he did have a few packets of rice sides. He decided to make one of them, a broccoli and cheese flavored packet, cooking it over the stove. He hated making rice in the microwave.

Soon enough, it was finished. He spooned portions out into three bowls, unsure of how much Gabriel and Castiel would eat. He set one of the bowls in front of Gabriel, who had crawled up onto a table.

“Careful, it’s hot,” He warned, putting the other bowls down and waking Castiel, bringing the sleepy angel over to eat his dinner. Neither ate as much as he’d thought they would, both leaving some behind as they finished. Dean hauled them over to the futon, snuggling Castiel up to a blanket. The younger angel was already falling back asleep, having not fully woken up in the first place. Gabriel, however, seemed fully awake.

“Let me eat and I’ll do something with you, kay?” Dean suggested as he put Gabriel and Castiel’s leftovers into his bowl. He wasn’t one to waste food, especially if it meant he could eat more. 

Especially after an accidental day of not eating a thing. The hunger gnawing away at his belly was uncomfortably familiar.

He quickly finished and came over to Gabriel.

“Alright, we’ve got about fifteen minutes before you need your meds again,” He announced. “What do you want to do?”

Gabriel shrugged then moved away, moving the duffel bags from their position against the wall and searching for something.

“What are you looking for?”

Gabriel’s mouth twisted as he thought, then he looked up at Dean and slotted his fingers together, trying to sign something.

“Alright, I’m gonna need to teach you two sign language,” Dean sighed. “Are you looking for something we brought from Sam’s house?” Gabriel nodded quickly. “Almost all of that is in the duffel bags, here-” He opened both of them, struggling slightly with a zipper. “-There you go.”

Gabriel leaned into the bags, moving board game boxes and clothes around until he found what he was looking for and hauled it out. He showed Dean a thousand-piece puzzle with an image of a cabin in woods reflected on a lake.

“That’ll be pretty difficult. It’ll take a while to finish, you sure you want to start it?”

Gabriel nodded firmly and Dean shrugged, picking the angel and puzzle up and taking them to the dinner table. The two opened the puzzle box and dumped the pieces, Gabriel starting on flipping them all face-up as Dean put the box down. 

They’d started on putting the edge pieces together when Dean’s alarm went off. Gabriel looked up at the man and he sighed. “Time or your meds, kid. Pill or crushed?”

Gabriel nodded and Dean, remembering their system from earlier, gave him a pill and water. 

“It’s time for bed anyway. Let’s get you changed into pajamas before you fall asleep, okay?”

The little angel nodded and dug out a set of mint green pajamas with wing cutouts. Dean helped him get changed, fatigue already dragging at Gabriel’s limbs and by the time they were done, he was already blinking tiredly. 

“Let me change then I’ll get you to bed, alright?” Gabriel nodded once more with a yawn and Dean changed quickly- out of his jeans and into sweatpants, choosing to leave his shirt off, then carried Gabriel to the futon, where it seemed the Castiel had already taken up residence. As Dean tried to set Gabriel down, the angel clung to his arm, staring up at him. “What is it?” Gabriel hugged his arm, a pout forming on his face. “Do you want me to stay?” A gentle nod followed his words. “Well, Castiel needs to be in pajamas too.” Gabriel released him and Dean found Castiel some blue pajamas. Somehow, the black-haired angel stayed asleep through Dean changing him and, even more surprisingly, Gabriel was still awake when Dean was finished. He suspected this was simply through sheer willpower though, because the moment Dean settled on the futon, Gabriel crawled onto his torso, head just below his chin, and fell asleep. Dean wedged a hand on the small of the angel’s back, under his wings, and ensured that his alarm was on for four hours later, then turned off the light and followed the angels into sleep.

~

This became a routine. Dean would take the angels to work, they would stay about ten hours or so and he would play with them until it was time for Gabriel to take his meds. Every time, Gabriel would ask him to stay and Dean got used to falling asleep with one angel on his chest, the other at his hip. 

Three days into this new routine, Castiel tried to follow Dean from the locker room into the garage.

“Hey, no, what are you doing?” Dean asked, picking him up and carrying him back to the blanket. “Stay here.”

“Bu’ wanna help,” Castiel whimpered. He’d been surprisingly verbal that day, asking for a peach for breakfast. Dean noticed he still tensed and flinched when he spoke, even if it was tiny movements, but was glad the angel was comfortable enough with him to even say a few words. 

“You want to help me fix cars?” Nod. “It’s messy work. I take a shower every night after work. If you help me, you’ll probably get oil in your wings and then you’ll have to wash it out. That involves water, are you sure you want to do that?”

Castiel hesitated then nodded. “No bath.”

“Um, okay. No bath. But if you come with me, you have to do exactly as I say. If you don’t, you could get hurt. If you don’t listen to me, even if you don’t end up getting hurt, you will have to stay in here. Understand?” Castiel nodded and Dean sighed. “Alright, I guess you can come with me.”

The angel grinned then wiggled out of Dean’s arms, crawling over to a sleeping Gabriel. He then did something very strange to Dean. He stretched to reach the base of his wings, doing something Dean couldn’t tell what was. He then smeared his fingers down one of Gabriel’s hands, whispering something under his breath. With his other hand, he patted Gabriel’s forehead three times then straightened up, making grabby hands for Dean to pick him back up.

“What was that?”

"So he knows I'll come back."

"I thought that was your little head thing?"

Castiel shook his head. "Diff'rent." 

The angel rested his head against Dean's collarbone as the man walked to the locker room door, fingers in his mouth, only to flinch as he walked into the garage. Overwhelmed by the noise, Castiel buried his face in Dean's neck, wings bristling. Dean could feel him shaking. 

"Do you want to go back?" Castiel shook his head. Dean shifted him to run a finger against the tips of his feathers, having found that this calmed the angel easiest. 

He'd had nightmares and woke Dean. It wasn't easy to sleep with a panicked angel sobbing against your hip no matter how quiet he tried to be. 

It took a few moments but eventually the angel relaxed and little, curling into a little ball in Dean's arms. He still clung to the stained material of his jumpsuit and his dark wings were still puffy, but he managed to turn his head and look out on the garage. 

Donnie noticed the two first and nudged Mike, an older coworker. The pair came over to greet Dean, who felt Castiel tense. 

"What's wrong?" He asked, finger brushing his feathers again. Castiel didn't reply, a low keening sound coming from deep in his throat. 

"Hey, Dean," Donnie greeted. At the sound of his voice, Castiel stiffened even more, burying his face against Dean's neck again, wings involuntarily spreading, his feathers still fluffed up. 

"Hold on," Dean replied, petting Castiel's wings in an attempt to calm him. With the dark feathers so fluffed, his hand almost disappeared. "Kid, what's the matter?"

Castiel merely shook his head, hands grabbing at his hair. When Dean saw him pulling at the dark strands, he grabbed Castiel's wrists and gently pulled his hands away. This was apparently the wrong thing to do because the angel started thrashing in Dean's arms, soft wails escaping though he tried to stop them. He scrambled from Dean's arms, scratching him in the process, and huddled in the ground, wings shrouding him. Dean gave his coworkers a bewildered glance as he crouched down in front of Castiel. 

"Hey, what's wrong?" He whispered. He didn't move to try to pet the angel's wings, seeing them shaking. The angel was unresponsive, remaining curled in the tiny ball. He wasn't making any sound, which was strange. Usually, frightened animals, especially young ones, would be whimpering or growling. Castiel wasn’t. He was completely silent. Dean looked back at his coworkers and it dawned on him as he moved to a criss-cross sitting position.

“Castiel, this isn’t the Bad Man. I’m almost positive of that.” Castiel shook his head quickly, the movement hardly able to be seen- his wings were covering his head almost entirely.

“Mike, run into the locker room and grab the tan trench coat on the blue blanket,” Dean ordered. “Quickly.” 

Mike left and now it was only Donnie, Dean, and Castiel. Dean didn’t know where his other coworkers were. He’d gotten there a little early, but usually there were at least two other people present.

Mike returned and handed Dean the trench coat. He wrapped Castiel in the material and the little one buried his nose in the fabric, wings shifting from their position just slightly. Dean reached forward and wiped a tear from Castiel’s soft cheek. The angel flinched at the touch but allowed it, still shaking. His eyes were tightly closed, tears clumping his lashes.

“Castiel, I’m going to pick you up, okay? Can I do that?” Dean spoke softly, trying to force his voice into something soothing. He hadn’t had to do something like this since Sam was a kid with nightmares. Even then, he’d only been about nine when Sam’s nightmares had stopped. 

Or stopped waking him.

The little angel hesitantly, jerkily, nodded, stiffening when Dean’s hands went around him. The motion was short, simply pulling the angel into his lap. He held the little one on his back. With his head now exposed, Dean was able to run his fingers through the little angel’s black hair. It was getting long, he thought. Tomorrow marked a week since Sam had been hurt and he still wasn’t released from the hospital. Granted, Dean hadn’t gone in to visit him. Work had taken all his time. That wasn’t okay. He resolved silently to get off early today and take the angels to see him. He was sure they missed him.

Dean had done all this thinking as he worked to calm Castiel down. He glanced up at some point to see Donne and Mike still standing there, joined by Caroline, who thankfully had her hair tied back into a bun. Dean wasn’t sure if Castiel could handle people with both traits he feared standing over him.

“He and his brother were born in a farm,” Dean started to explain what was happening. “They were saved before they were old enough to have much facial recognition, so the only things they know about the people that hurt them were that one was a man with dark skin and the other was a woman with long dark hair. They’re absolutely terrified of anyone with those traits. They were tortured though, so it’s worse than most farm angels. From what I’ve heard, they’re getting better about it.” 

“They’re not yours?” Caroline asked. 

“No, they’re my brother’s. He just can’t take care of them right now.”

Castiel sniffed and turned over in Dean’s lap, moving to face him and leaned his head against Dean’s stomach. Dean rubbed his head with a thumb. “Doing better?” The little angel nodded. His eyes were still closed. “Can you look at him? His name is Donnie and he’s really nice.” Castiel shrugged. “Alright, well he’s going to sit down and I’d like you to try to look at him. Just a little. Please?”

Taking the hint, Donnie sat down a few feet away. Castiel eventually opened his deep blue eyes to look at the man. At first sight, he flinched, pressing himself against Dean. After a few seconds of staring at Donnie, Castiel shifted his wings away from their defensive position, folding them neatly behind him back. He rewrapped the trench coat around himself though, shrouding his little body in the tan fabric. Eventually, he looked away. His lack of change in reaction was, to Dean, confirmation that this wasn’t the mysterious Bad Man.

“What’s going on here?” Bobby demanded, coming in and seeing his workers all standing around. At his loud, sudden voice, Castiel flinched, huddling back into the trench coat, wings furling around himself again. “We have work to do. Cars won’t fix themselves.” 

“Sorry Mr. Singer,” Caroline whimpered as the three scattered. She was afraid of Bobby, especially considering she had only been working there about a month.

“Dean?” Bobby asked expectantly, coming over to him. He was about to ask something else then saw the trench coat-covered angel in Dean’s lap. “Who’s that?”

“This is Castiel. He was scared of Donnie so we were trying to get him to look at him. Castiel, this is Bobby. I told you about Bobby, remember?” The angel nodded and shifted the trench coat from covering his eyes. Bobby was kneeling in front of them, his gruff face holding a soft expression Dean was unused to.

“Hello, Castiel,” Bobby greeted. He placed one hand, palm up, near Castiel. After some hesitation, Castiel reached forward and brushed his fingers against Bobby’s, gazing into the man’s blue eyes with his own, the color vivid. Eventually, Castiel unfurled his wings, tucking them behind his back again. He crawled closer to Bobby, Dean watching in surprise as the angel let Bobby move his hand to scratch his head with his fingertips. Castiel nuzzled his head against Bobby’s hand and he scooped the angel up. A low purr could be heard rumbling from Castiel’s throat as he enjoyed the attention, a slight smile twitching at his lips.

“Go to work,” Bobby murmured. “I’ll bring him over soon.”

With no doubts about Castiel’s safety with Bobby, Dean obeyed, moving softly so he didn’t disturb the angel. 

Dean wasn’t sure how long it was, but eventually, he heard Bobby calling his name. He rolled the creeper out from under the Volvo to see Bobby and Castiel waiting for him. The man was stooped over so Castiel could wrap his little hand around his finger, but the angel was glowing, a big grin on his face. His wings were fluttering, nothing new, but Dean noticed that they looked smoother, the downy feathers glossy.

“What’d you do?” Dean asked as the angel released Bobby’s finger.

“Just a few things I learned years ago. I’ll show you when your hands aren’t covered in oil.”

Castiel came over to Dean as Bobby left.

“So, what do you think of him?”

“I like Mr. Bobby,” Castiel smiled.”He’s nice. He makes my wings feel good.”

“Oh, that’s- That’s good,” The full sentences were somewhat surprising. Castiel, from the little he’d said, spoke in fragmented sentences. 

“What’re you doin’? With the-” Castiel cut himself off, motioning to the Volvo. “The-” He huffed in frustration and gave Dean a look.

“The car?” Nod. “I’m fixin’ ‘er.”

“What’s this?” Castiel then asked, tapping the creeper. He seemed satisfied by Dean’s answer.

“That’s my creeper. It helps me get under the car. It rolls, see?” Dean rolled the creeper back and forth a bit. Castiel’s mouth dropped open a little bit. “You said you’re okay with getting messy?” Nod. “Then come here. Lemme show you something.” He grabbed Castiel under his arms and pulled him to lay on his back on Dean’s chest. After a bit of wiggling, he moved his wings so they weren’t smushed between the two. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” Castiel’s voice was small and uncertain. He squealed when Dean pushed them under the car, watching in wonder as the ceiling moved, replaced by the underside of the car.

“I’m working on everything that gets done underneath the car this week. I’m working on the body, the outside, next week.”

“What happened?” Castiel’s voice was hardly above a whisper.

“She got in a wreck. Like Sammy. And like Sam, cars get hurt in wrecks. I’m the one that fixes them up so they look like new again.”

“You’re a… A car doctor?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

Dean and Castiel stayed under the car for hours, Dean explaining to Castiel everything he did and answering every question. They both stiffened simultaneously when a strange bolt of fear hit them. It wasn’t like they were  _ feeling _ fear, more like they were feeling someone else’s.

_ Castiel! _

Dean rolled the creeper out from underneath the car. Thankfully, he did this in time for Castiel to jump off of him just as the emerged from underneath. Glancing up, Dean could see that if the angel had moved a second earlier, his wing could have been caught on a piece of metal and if he moved too fast, it would have been torn up by the jagged piece. Shaking the frankly terrifying thought away, he followed Castiel to the locker room. The angel was too little to open the door so Dean did that, revealing a panicking Gabriel flapping around the room.

Literally, flapping. His wings were spreading wider than Dean had ever seen them, moving in great sweeps, causing eddies of air to spring up and blow the edges of the blanket up when he was near it. He paused when Dean and Castiel entered then threw himself at his little brother, worry radiating off of him. He pulled Castiel in a tug hug, freezing and wrinkling his nose up as he pulled away. He then leaned forward and  _ sniffed  _ the smaller angel, frowning.

“Was with Dean. Met Mr. Bobby and helped fix a car,” Castiel explained. Gabriel’s head shot up to look at Dean.

“He was very good and listened to what I said. I told him that if he came and worked with me, he would have to take a shower and do exactly as I said. He agreed and I took him with me. He almost hurt himself-”

“I did?”

“When he jumped up to come over here. There was a piece of metal that could have caught his wing-”

“Oh.”

“How did you know to come over here anyway?”

Castiel shrugged. “Just… Had a feeling.”

“You’re very… Verbal,” Gabriel spoke quietly. His voice was still quite rough but after almost four days of not speaking, he’d gotten a lot better.

“You’re sounding better, kid,” Dean told him, echoing the narrator’s thoughts. Gabriel shrugged.

“Good words day,” Castiel replied to his brother. His speech was, for some reason, getting more fragmented. 

“Do I have to take meds?” Gabriel asked.

“No, you’ve got… About an hour,” Dean answered after he checked his phone for the time. 

“Can I go with you?”

“For?”

“Work. Castiel went with you.”

“You’re going to need to get washed up,” Dean warned. “Castiel already will. Do you want to get oil all over your wings? I’ll have to touch them to get them clean.”

Gabriel’s jaw shifted as he thought about it. “I’ll… Try not to get messy. Don’t… Don’t touch my wings. Please.”

“It may be unavoidable.”

“Then Castiel! Not you!” Gabriel was shaking as he shouted at Dean, his whiskey eyes wide and ful of emotion.

“Okay! Okay. We’ll figure it out later if you really want to come out with me. You’ll have to listen to what I say, though, understand? I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull both of you under the car with me.”

Dean led the angels from the locker room, not picking them up in order to avoid getting Gabriel messy and Castiel messier. They followed closely behind him, resembling ducklings. Gabriel, however, stopped when he noticed Donnie talking to someone. He grabbed Castiel’s wrist, wings twitching slightly as they very slowly raised in what Dean now recognized as a protective movement.

“He’s safe,” Castiel mumbled. “He’s… Okay.”

“That’s Donnie,” Dean told him. “He’s nice, I swear.”

“ _ He _ seemed nice too once,” Gabriel muttered, but followed Dean. He didn’t release his brother’s wrist, however, choosing to keep in contact with him. Dean took them to the Volvo and explained what had happened to her as Gabriel stared at the crumpled powder blue car. After a bit of finagling, Dean managed to get both angels on the creeper. Gabriel was lying on Dean’s chest, much like Castiel had, and Castiel was somewhere near Dean’s feet. He’d promised not to touch anything and at some point, ended up wiggling so his head was resting on Gabriel’s stomach. Soon, though, Dean’s phone went off with the alarm for Gabriel’s medicine. Once again, the creeper emerged from the car and the three trooped back to the locker room. It was messier than Dean remembered it being earlier, but that could have been due to his not paying attention.

Golden feathers were strewn all over, coloring books blown over benches and the blanket was half folded over itself. Castiel saw the feathers and frowned.

“Well, let’s get this cleaned up,” Dean sighed. It didn’t take long with all three of them helping, but only Gabriel and Castiel cleaned up the feathers. Dean was hissed at when he tried. He then got the two a snack and gave Gabriel his medicine. The angel preferred taking the pills by himself it seemed, and who was Dean to refuse him that?

“Alright, while you’re still awake,” Dean started. “What’s with the feathers falling out?”

“Probably related to being sick,” Gabriel muttered. “That’s my guess. I can’t think of any other reason. Feathers don’t just fall out. We don’t molt like birds do.”

“Do you know what kind of sickness would make feathers fall out then?”

Gabriel snorted. “No idea. Do I look like I know much?”

“You look like you now how to be a sarcastic little shit,” Dean shot back. Gabriel shrugged with a slight smile and yawned.

“Stupid meds,” He muttered.

“It’s not permanent,” Dean told the angel as he allowed him to crawl into his lap. “Just for now.”

“They aren’t even making me feel better. Just tired,” Gabriel muttered grumpily. Dean ran a hand down his hair, smiling ever so slightly as the angel shivered at the sensation.

“I know, it sucks. Sooner you get better, sooner you’ll get off them.”

“Mhmm,” Gabriel trailed off and it didn’t take much to figure out that he’d fallen asleep, once again.

“Castiel, why don’t you stay here with Gabriel?” Dean suggested after a bit. “I don’t want him to wake up alone again and freak out.”

Castiel nodded and Dean shifted Gabriel off his lap. He needed to get to work. He wasn’t getting paid to sit and hang out with the angels.

He was almost finished with everything he could do under the car when the next alarm went off. He gave Gabriel his meds and went out to continue when his phone went off. He pulled it out to see  _ Sam _ flashing across the screen in a call. He swiped to answer it, confusion running through him.

“Hey, Sammy,” He greeted. “I was planning on coming to see you today. What’s up?”

“ _ They’re gonna take them from me! _ ” Sam cried over the line. “ _ They’re gonna take them and I- _ ”

“Sam! Sammy, slow down.  _ Who’s _ gonna take  _ what _ from you?”

“ _ APS! They’re gonna take Castiel and Gabriel! _ ”


	9. Chapter 9

“Hold, hold on. What’s APS?”

“ _ Angel Protective Services, _ ”

“I didn’t know that existed.”

“ _ It’s- It’s new. Only formed in the past few years but they set standards on who is suitable owner for angels and- and they think I’m not and- _ ”

“Sam!” Dean cut his brother off, sensing that he was getting hysterical again. “Hold on a bit, calm yourself down. Let me leave work and get a shower, then I’ll be over as fast as I can, okay?”

“ _ You- You’re at work? Then where- _ ”

“Castiel and Gabriel are hanging out in the locker room. Bobby said it was okay and they’re occupied. A lot’s happened this past week, I’ll update you after you tell me what’s going on with this APS, okay?”

“ _ Okay, _ ” Sam sounded somewhat relieved as Dean took control, telling him what to do. It was familiar, something to ground himself on. “ _ I’ll let you go so you can drive then. _ ” Sam knew Dean hated talking on the phone while driving.

“Alright. See you soon, Sammy. Bye.” Dean hung up then marched to Bobby’s office.

“I need to go,” He announced. “Sam called me, I need to go see him.”

“Alright, go ahead,” Bobby replied, looking up from his paperwork. “You’ve been working hard this week. Tell him I said to get better soon, you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” Dean left and this time went to the locker room, where he found Gabriel still fast asleep. Not surprising- It hadn’t even been a half-hour since he’d gotten the medicine. He changed out of his jumpsuit after telling Castiel to get the toys packed up. The little angel opted to walk out to the car this time, carrying his trench coat as Dean took the backpack and sleeping Gabriel. It was much easier to get the doors open this time and Dean was able to put Gabriel in the seat before helping Castiel up. He drove them home and carried both to his apartment, not wanting to risk someone grabbing Castiel.

“Alright Castiel, let’s let Gabriel sleep and get you cleaned up, okay?”

“Alright,” Castiel mumbled, uncertain.

“No bath. It’ll just be the showerhead. I’ll make it as short as I can. There are towels in the closet, can you go find one or two to use?”

Castiel nodded, making his way to the same closet he’d gotten stuck in a few days ago. While he picked out towels, Dean grabbed the angel soaps he’d picked up from Sam’s house at some point. They were specially formulated not to strip the natural oils from their wings, or something like that. Dean just hoped it would get the oil out of Castiel’s feathers. It would be nearly impossible to tell with how dark they were. He snatched up a new change of clothes for the angel and made his way to the bathroom, where he found two fluffy towels sitting on the floor but not a black-haired toddler in sight.

“Castiel?” Dean called. “Where’d you go?” There was no response. “Come on, the sooner we all get cleaned up, the sooner we can see Sam.”

“Sam?” Castiel’s head poked out from behind the door.

“Yeah. We’re gonna go visit Sam today as soon as everybody’s cleaned up.”

Castiel emerged from behind the door and Dean helped him out of his clothes, lifting him into the tub and being struck by how, yet again, this felt like he was taking care of Sam.

Dean turned on the water and Castiel flinched from the falling droplets.

“It’s like controlled rain,” Dean told him, reaching to smooth the angel’s hair back. “I can move the showerhead closer and farther and mostly control where it goes. I’m gonna do that and if you and you need me to stop, tell me, okay? All the water drain away so it won’t puddle up.”

“Okay,” Castiel whispered.

“Put your hand the water and tell me if it’s too hot or cold.”

“ ‘T’s cold.”

Dean turned the water warmer and Castiel nodded. He sprayed the angel enough to get him wet enough to lather up the soap. He had to rinse Castiel’s wings multiple times under the bubbles stopped turning grayish, indicating that there was oil left in his feathers.

“How did you manage to get this much oil in your wings?” Dean asked at some point. “You were on your back.” Castiel simply shrugged. Dean could feel him shaking, but the angel didn’t say anything. 

Dean wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

Eventually, Castiel was clean and wrapped up tight in a fluffy towel. Dean rubbed the water from his wings the best he could but the feathers were still quite wet.

“I don’t have a blow dryer, otherwise I would use that. Let’s just put pants on you then let them air-dry while I get a shower myself.”

Castiel stayed silent as he pulled a pair of jeans on. He went back out to the living room as Dean grabbed clean clothes and took a shower. He went to the living room afterwards to see Gabriel just waking up and Castiel lying face-first on the floor in the square of light filtering in from the window, wings spread out.

Dean was about to say something, but paused. The light was reflecting off Castiel’s wings to finally,  _ finally _ reveal what color they truly were, other than “dark”. Dean could never tell what color they truly were. Sometimes, he thought they were blue-tinted, other times purple…

In the sunlight, his feathers had veins of a shimmering, rich indigo. They were mostly black, the color providing slight contrast and depth. They were really quite beautiful.

Dean caught Gabriel sleepily watching him, a slight smile forming on the fledgling’s lips.

“Your turn for a shower,” Dean told him. Gabriel rolled over to get up and grabbed new clothes at Dean’s prompting. The man then led the oil-smudged angel to the bathroom.

Dean had been hoping it would go faster since Gabriel wasn’t so afraid of water. It did, mostly, right up until it got to his wings.

“Don’t. Touch. Them,” Gabriel growled from the corner of the tub. Dean was where he’d been, soap in his hand, extremely frustrated.

“They need to get clean somehow.”

“... Give me the soap.”

“What?”

“Give me the damn soap!”

“Watch your mouth!” Dean scolded as he squirted soap into the angel’s hands. “That won’t be enough for one wing, much less two. It wasn’t enough for one wash of Castiel’s and we had to wash them like, three times. Your wings are much bigger and I can guarantee that you can’t reach every part. I’ll be  _ damned _ if I leave oil on your wings, Sam would kill me and that’d mess your wings up real bad.”

Gabriel grumbled under his breath as he began to scrub at the tip of a wing. Sure enough, the suds turned an ugly gray color and Dean sprayed them off, squirting more soap into Gabriel’s hands.

“See why I wanted to do it?” Dean asked later, when the very end of Gabriel’s wing was clean. “That’ll take ages and we were gonna see Sam.”

Gabriel’s jaw shifted, which Dean was coming to realize was something the angel did when he was angry but thinking. Eventually, he huffed out a sigh.

“Fine.”

“Wait, really?”

“Don’t make me regret it,” The angel warned, moving closer to allow Dean to wash his wings.

“If you need me to stop, just say so.”

The moment Dean’s fingers barely brushed, the waterlogged feathers stood on end. Gabriel let him rub soap through the golden plumage for only a minute or two before calling him to stop. 

Dean pulled away, letting the angel move as well. Every muscle in the little one’s body was rigid, tension radiating off of him. His hands were curled into fists and his breathing was catching in his throat. His wings trembled weakly as they drooped, too heavy with water for Gabriel to hold up.

They sat like that for at least five minutes while Gabriel tried to calm himself down. Eventually, he scooted back.

“Please be quick,” He breathed. “Just go fast.”

“I’ll do my best,” Dean promised. He tried to ignore Gabriel’s whimpers and the slight twitching of his wings. He did his best to disregard the fact that the angel wasn’t taking a full breath. He barely managed to get past the moment when tears began rolling down his cheeks, though they could have just been water drops from his hair. Then it happened.

Dean was getting close to finished, thankfully. Unfortunately, this meant that he was getting closer to the base of Gabriel’s wings, where they sprouted from his back. He was scrubbing more soap in when his fingers brushed a bald spot in the feathers and scar tissue. With an unearthly screech, the angel bolted. He climbed the shower curtain and clung to the rod holding it up as his back arched, wings spreading inadvertently. The waterlogged feathers were fluffed, dripping sudsy water.

Gabriel’s whisky eyes were wide and terrified, which Dean expected, given his fear, but they were also unfocused.

“Gabriel?” Dean called up to him softly. He didn’t want to spook the creature. This didn’t seem to matter, though, as he got no response, not even a motion that would show Gabriel even heard him. 

The fledgling was lost inside his own mind. 

“Gabriel, please answer me,” Dean tried again. He wasn’t expecting anything, just hoped that the angel would come back. 

What if he’d traumatized him? Undid what Balthazar had done?

Despite this worry, Dean kept talking to the angel, hoping that his voice would rouse him.

“Please come back,” He murmured at one point. “Castiel needs you.”

“C-Castiel?” Gabriel whispered. His eyes seemed to focus, he seemed just slightly more ‘there’.

“Castiel,” Dean repeated. It seemed that the mention of the younger angel was helping. “Come back to me, Gabriel.”

“Come…” The angel echoed softly, shifting and almost slipping off the rod. This seemed to drag his mind back to the present. “W-what happened?”

“I must have done something when I was cleaning your wings. You freaked out and climbed up there. You weren’t answering me when I was calling you until I mentioned Castiel.”

“Castiel. I- Yeah. O-okay.”

“Can you come down? I’m pretty sure you don’t have any more oil in your wings, we just need to get the suds out. I can do that without touching them with my hands. I’ll stay away.”

“Kay. Okay,” Gabriel kept repeating the word, stuttery and shaky as he carefully inched down the plastic curtain. There weren’t very many handholds and his claws weren’t grown back in enough to pierce the material. Dean picked up the showerhead as the angel reached the ground. 

“Am I okay to spray you with the water?”

“Mhmm.”

Dean did so, making sure he got every least soap bubble out of Gabriel’s wings. “Turn around,” He ordered at one point so he could be sure he rinsed all of the soap off of him. He then turned off the water.

“You’re done,” He told him. “Try to get out and I’ll give you a towel to dry off with.”

Eventually, it ended up that Dean was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, Gabriel on his lap. There was a towel underneath the angel and around his shoulders. Dean wasn’t sure how it was that the angel had ended up sitting on his lap, but he wasn’t going to argue. To him, it was a miracle that Gabriel was even allowing physical contact.

“T-that was where they-they-” Gabriel cut himself off. “Cassie was little. He hardly opened his eyes and my wings were big. My feathers were pretty, she said. She liked touching them. He said they would bring in a nice sum. Look good above the mantle. They took me out of the room once. They- They had-” Gabriel tried to take in a deep breath but released it as he burst out in broken sobs. Dean carefully gathered the angel closer to him, ignoring how his shirt got wet. He could change it later. He carefully rocked and shushed the angel, sighing in annoyance as his alarm for meds went off, then realized that this could actually help.

“Do you want to take your medicine?” He asked softly. “It’ll make you fall asleep and you won’t have to think about it.”

Gulping in great gasps of air, Gabriel nodded. 

“Can I carry you out to where the bottle is?” Another nod and Dean shifted the towels. “Are you okay to put pants on?” A third nod and Dean shimmied a little pair of soft, worn jeans onto the angel’s bony body. He then picked him up, situating a towel to hang over his limp, damaged wings. 

Castiel looked up as they emerged from the bathroom, still lying in the sunlight despite his wings being dry and fluffy. Dean could still see the veins of indigo threading through the feathers. He helped Gabriel take the medicine, the angel’s trembling hands unable to hold the water bottle, then carried him to lay next to Castiel, drying his golden wings in the sun. The light caught his feathers just right and the color transformed from a lovely sunny sheen to a brilliant, shining saffron. The light seemed to refract in a way that made it look like his wings were glowing and Dean’s breath was actually taken away. 

He’d never seen anything so beautiful. Words didn’t do the view justice.

Literally, the narrator  _ could not _ find the right words. No amount of looking up “how to describe gold” would help and the story needed to move on. Dammit, Ro. Focus.

Once Dean managed to stop marveling at the angels’ wings, he noticed that the medicine seemed to be having the desired effect- Gabriel was relaxing, already looking drowsy. Dean quickly went and changed his shirt then replaced Gabriel’s medicine bottle in the backpack. Castiel watched him from his spread-eagle spot on the floor. He didn’t have much sun left thanks to his moving for Gabriel, but he was sleepy too- he’d been away from the apartment so much recently  _ and _ he’d accompanied Dean in the garage longer than Gabriel had. Besides, his brother had slept more. 

By the time Dean decided it was time to go, Castiel was almost asleep. Dean glanced at the two and picked up their shoes, putting them in the backpack. He tossed the bag on, grabbed the trench coat, then picked the two up. Gabriel didn’t respond, maybe mumbled in his sleep a little, but Castiel lifted his head, blinking tiredly up at Dean.

“We’re just leaving, it’s okay,” Dean told him. “You can go to sleep.”

Dean carried the two out to the car. Thankfully, he’d gotten good at carrying a bunch of stuff in the past week, and was finding it much easier to do so. He put Castiel in first, then Gabriel. The older fledgling’s wings were still damp, so he planned on opening a window as they drove to blow him dry on the way to the hospital. After dropping the bag and coat in the back, he started the drive to the hospital.

Before going in, he dug the angels’ shoes from the backpack, wiggling them on their feet and tying them. Neither woke up to the motion, nor did they wake up on the way to Sam’s room.

“Hey,” Dean greeted as he walked in. Sam looked up and the brothers finally saw each other again.

Sam’s usually neat hair was a mess. His eyes were red-rimmed from his panicked crying earlier. He had one arm in a sling, the other playing on his phone that was somehow intact after the crash. He wasn’t connected to IVs anymore and honestly, Dean wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been released yet. He  _ looked _ like he was healing okay.

“So tell me, what’s going on?” He asked as he settled Gabriel and Castiel in a chair, tucking the trench coat around them. Gabriel’s wings had dried but now his hair was blown all over his face, which Dean fixed before turning back to his brother.

“Well, they did surgery to fix my shoulder, but I guess something went wrong or things were worse than they thought, cause…” Sam sighed. “They said I probably won’t have full use of my arm again, if I’m lucky enough to be able to do more than move it. They said I probably won’t be able to use my hand again either. They said some nerve had been severed and damaged so bad that they couldn’t fix it.”

“Oh, Sammy,” Dean sighed, settling on the side of the bed on Sam’s uninjured side.

“Then APS came by today, just before I called you. Apparently, they have a database of who owns angels. Castiel and Gabriel are labelled as farm angels and apparently, unless you have full use of all your limbs, you can’t own a farm angel, according to their protocols. They said that unless I can find a suitable owner within the next three days, they’ll take them and assign them a new owner. I would ask Benny, but he’s got his hands full with his own group of angels and I don’t know who else would take them. Jody can’t, she’s a cop, she’s too busy. Donna and Ellen can’t either, so there’s really nobody. APS’ll take them from me and give them to some random person, but they’re way too traumatized to be able to do that. I just got Castiel talking in full sentences at home, where he was most comfortable. That’ll all go away if they’re put in a new home and who knows if they’ll be kept together? They might be split up then nobody’ll take them cause they’ll be too misbehaved. Then they’ll get put down and-”

“Sam!” Dean cut his brother off, putting a hand on his good shoulder. “I’ll take them.”

This statement stunned both of them.

“Wait… What?”

“I’ll take them,” Dean repeated. “They’re already staying with me anyway. I’ll just go over the APS regulations and make sure that my apartment’s okay. We can figure this out.”

“You’d really take them? You don’t hate angels anymore?”

“Yeah.” Dean glanced at the peacefully sleeping creatures. “They’re growing on me.”

“So- So what did you mean by a lot happening this week?”

“Well, it was fine at first, but I think the day after all this started, I tried to touch Gabriel’s wings. He freaked out and hid under the bed. Then Castiel spilled milk on himself so I tried to give him a bath and  _ he  _ freaked out. So I called Jody, she explained where they came from and what we know of what happened to them. While we were there, this fledgling named Samandriel was brought in, he was really hurt but Jody was able to patch him up. Castiel, Gabriel, and this angel named Balthazar-”

“I know Balthazar.”

“-All wanted to hang out in the clinic. Samandriel could only chirp but Balthazar translated to find out that Samandriel had come from a farm run by the same people as the farm Gabriel and Castiel came from. This guy named Alastair and some girl named Ruby. Castiel chirped a whole lot, which was pretty weird. He hasn’t said that much since. Balthazar made this mind-link thing with Gabriel to look at his memories and said that what he saw was too bad to repeat then yelled at us for asking him to try. He also said he muted Gabriel’s farm memories, but we don’t know. Apparently, this mind-link thing isn’t a very well-known thing. There’s also apparently an angelic hierarchy, but nobody will say anything about it.”

“Fun.”

“Yeah. So after that, I took the angels out to lunch with Jody, Ellen, and Jo at Benny’s. Did you know he rehabilitates angels?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Well, he said that he had an angel that lost a wing that’s recovering and another angel that was stripped like Gabriel who is starting to fly. He also mentioned that he had one who had lost her babies and Castiel decided that he wanted to meet her. Benny let them and she put Castiel to sleep and hung out with Gabriel. We went and talked to other angels he’s helping and we mentioned the mind-link and hierarchy Balthazar had mentioned. They said that the mind-link was supposed to be kept secret but it was alright  _ ish _ if it got out but apparently, this hierarchy is supposed to be kept from angel at all costs.”

“Then why’d Balthazar mention the hierarchy?”

“Gabriel had started getting really angry and was flaring his wings and Balthazar was acting weird. Like flattening his wings to the table. Jody mentioned that it looked like submissive behavior for dogs and Balthazar snapped something about the hierarchy. Anyway, the angels got annoyed about it. Eventually, we grabbed Gabriel and Castiel and I went back to my apartment with them. I taught Castiel some card games, Gabriel was out of it most of the rest of the day. That night, thought, Castiel woke me up and dragged me over to the bedroom. I ended up having to take Gabriel to the hospital, his fever had gotten so high. He was crying so hard that he completely killed what was left of his voice. There, I found out that they’re afraid of black men. Apparently, one of the people they interacted with a lot in the farm was a black guy. It’s like how they’re afraid of Tessa because of her hair.”

“They didn’t have facial recognition yet,” Sam murmured. 

“Yeah, but Castiel at least is getting better about it. Anyways, the doctor told me that Gabriel’s pretty much in perfect health besides his fever and cough. He told me to take him off the antibacterial and prescribed a fever-reducer. It makes him really tired, but his fever’s staying down and he’s started talking again. His voice is a lot better now.”

“What about his cough?”

“Since he’s been asleep so much, he isn’t coughing. He’s hardly awake for an hour between doses and I’m not there much of when he is-”

“Wait, why not?”

“I’m getting to that. I haven’t been seeing him coughing much though. Anyways, we were released like, an hour or so before I had to clock on for work so I called Bobby and asked him if I could bring them in and have them stay in the locker room. He said that was fine but ordered me to take a nap. After I woke up and got everyone dressed and ready to go, we went to the store to grab them stuff to eat and play with while they were there. They’ve been hanging out in the locker room. Gabriel sleeps most of the time and Castiel occupies himself with the coloring books, Legos, and other things. I think he started a puzzle a few days ago. It’s been the same for the past few days but earlier today, Castiel asked to come with me. After I warned him that he’d get dirty and need to get cleaned up, I made him promise to listen to everything I said and not go running off. I let him cause he’s been on his own and I thought it would be nice for him to get out of the locker room. He freaked out when he saw Donnie but calmed down and then Bobby took him somewhere. He brought him back and his wings were all shiny. Castiel said he liked him-”

“Said?”

“He’s been really verbal today, compared to other days. When I was working with him, he was laying on his back on me so he could watch. Gabriel woke up and asked to come out until he got his meds. I warned him that he’d get dirty and that someone would need to clean his wings, which he didn’t like, but he insisted on coming out. I let him and they watched me work until it was time for meds. Soon after his next dose, you called me and I took them back to the apartment to clean them up. Castiel went first cause Gabriel was asleep and he did fairly alright. No baths for him, that’s for sure. I mentioned how it was like rain and that may have helped him a little. He was shaking, but he made it through okay. I dried him off as best as I could and got my own shower. He was laying in the sun when I got out.

Dean paused with a sigh. “Gabriel didn’t do nearly as well. He was fine up until it was time to wash his wings. He tried to do it himself at first but since they’re so big and it’s tough to get oil out of their feathers, it took him like, twenty minutes to clean part of one wing. He eventually let me do it-”

“He  _ what!? _ I’ve never been able to touch his wings!”

“It was hard for him. Like, nearly impossible. He was on the verge of panicking the whole time and I had to stop at some point. I accidentally got too close to some sensitive spot and he freaked, climbed up the shower curtain. It took like, ten minutes to get him down. Eventually got the shower done and dried him off except for his wings and gave him his meds, hoping that he’d fall asleep and calm down. It actually worked and I stuck him in the sun to dry while I changed my shirt and got ready to go. Loaded them up in Baby, had the window down to finish drying him off, and here we are.”

Sam didn’t say anything, just looked over at the sleeping angels. “How long do you think it’ll be before he wakes up?”

“Probably a few hours,” Dean replied. “He likes sleeping on people, though, for some reason.”

Sam cracked a smile. “Yeah. He used to crawl into my bed during the night. I’d wake up with feathers up my nose.”

“Sounds about right,” 

Sam’s face dropped. “I don’t want to lose them, they’re…”

“You won’t be losing them. I’ll have them and you’re welcome to come see them any time.”

“That’s  _ if  _ they approve you to take them.”

“True,” Dean sighed. The brothers sat in silence for a few minutes, then started talking about everything and nothing. About an hour later though, Castiel began to stir. 

He twitched and yawned as he opened his eyes, pausing when he recognized that he wasn’t in either the apartment or locker room. He froze when he noticed Sam. His face lit up and he scrambled off the chair, climbing up the side of the bed to nuzzle against him, making soft, happy chirps.

“Hi, Castiel,” Sam whispered, pulling the angel to his side with his good arm. The fledgling shifted to put his head and a hand on Sam’s chest, smiling up at him. “How are you?”

“Missed you, Sammy,” Castiel replied, then noticed the sling on Sam’s right arm. “What happen?”

“When I got hurt, my shoulder was hurt really bad,” Sam explained as he comped his good hand through Castiel’s feathery black hair. “The doctors can’t fix it right now so I have to wear the sling to keep it from getting worse.” It, obviously, wasn’t entirely true but he couldn’t exactly tell the fledgling that his entire life was going to be flipped upside down. “Oh, Dean, can you hand me my phone? The APS worker gave me a number to call for if I found a… A better person.”

Dean wordlessly gave the cell phone to his brother, watching as he took it and, one-handed, called the worker.

“Hi, it’s Sam Winchester. You told me to call when I found someone?” Pause. “Yeah, they’re with me right now if you want to come back to the hospital I can give you their number if not- Okay. Okay, I’ll see you, then.” He hung up fairly quickly. “She’s on her way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooh, who do you think She is?
> 
> I love how you all were like "APS needs to not" without even knowing what APS was, that was great. 
> 
> Love you guys!


	10. Chapter 10

Sam and Dean sat in tense silence as they waited for the APS worker. About a half hour later, a knock came at the door and Dean stood up to open it, as courtesy.

“Hi, are you-”

“I am Lady Toni Bevell with Angel Protective Services,” The woman, a blonde with a slight build, dressed in a white shirt with a black blazer and pencil skirt, spoke with a British accent. “I have been assigned to Castiel and Gabriel’s case. You are?”

“I’m Dean, Sam’s brother,” Dean stepped to the side to allow Toni to walk in. She did so briskly, her heels clicking on the tile floor.

“Well, Sam, you said you had someone suitable to take ownership of the angels?”

Evidently, this woman did not mess around.

“Uh, yeah. Dean. He’s been taking care of them since I got hurt. I’d asked him to watch them the day of the crash, since I had an interview and didn’t want to leave them alone. Gabriel’s been sick.”

“Has he? And-” Lady Bevell looked to Dean as she opened a folder, writing with a pen she’d whipped out, seemingly from nowhere. “-How has his condition been?”

“Well, he got worse than better. When I started watching him, he was feverish and had a nasty cough. The cough and fever got so bad that he couldn’t talk and I had to take him to the ER to get the fever down. They prescribed him medicine that’s been making him really tired, so he’s been asleep most of the time. While he was awake earlier, he was speaking again. He seems like he’s getting better.”

Toni hummed as she wrote. “And, what hospital was this?”

“I think- Yeah, Center Road. It’s closer to my apartment than this one and I wanted Gabriel to get treated as fast as possible. He was miserable, wouldn’t stop crying.” 

“You mentioned a medicine, do you have that with you?”

“Yeah, I’ve been bringing all their papers and meds and stuff with me everywhere I go,” Dean murmured as he dug into the pocket of the backpack. He found the bottle of pills and handed it to Lady Bevell. “He’s been taking the pills whole, he decided that he preferred it to crushing it up over his food.”

Toni wrote the name of the medicine down and handed it back to Dean. 

“Alright, if we are going to consider you as a candidate to take ownership, I will need your first and last name, date of birth, phone number, email, and address,” She listed. 

Dean was _so_ tempted to give the same snarky reply he'd given the cops when they'd caught him as a teenager but knew he couldn't. Not with Sam's angels on the line. 

"Dean Winchester, born January 24, 1979. Phone is 1-866-907-3235, my email is dwinchester5683@gmail.com and my address is 67 Walnut Street, Building D, apartment 106."

"City and state?"

"These ones."

"Humor me," Lady Bevell gave Dean a dark look.

"Boulder, Colorado.”

“Thank you,” She closed the folder with a snap. “Dean, are you available Sunday for an inspection of your home to ensure that it is suitable for angels?”

“Um, I think so,” 

“Wonderful. I believe I will see you then.” She then looked around. "You mentioned that one was ill. Where are they?"

"Well, Gabriel's asleep in the trench coat-" The angle made it so Toni couldn't see him past the folds of the coat. "-and Castiel is with Sam."

Toni looked over and sure enough, the black-haired fledgling was laying at Sam's hip, fingers in his mouth. 

"Hello, Castiel," Toni greeted, getting up and moving her chair to be closer to the angel. "How are you?"

The fledgling waved at her with his free hand, nestled with Sam. 

"He's selectively mute," The tall man explained. "He doesn't know you so he definitely won't speak. It took ages for him to be comfortable enough to talk to me. He's getting better about it, though."

"He only started talking to me through necessity, but he's getting more talkative." Dean continued. 

"Well, is he in therapy?"

"No, I decided it would be best if I worked with them to try to get past their fears since I lived with them and could tell when one was having a bad day. With what they’d been through, I thought it would be better if someone they were familiar with tried to help them.”

“What exactly have they been through?” Lady Bevell asked.

“Well obviously you know they were raised on a farm,” Sam started, combing a hand through Castiel’s hair as the fledgling wriggled up his chest. “They were found in a separate room and- Dude, quit moving.” Castiel was shoving his head on Sam’s chin at this point and Sam pushed the fledgling down and flipped him on his back then put a hand over his stomach. A tiny smile blossomed over the little one’s lips. “They were in a separate room and in terrible condition. Gabriel’s wings were stripped-”

“What does that mean?”

“Completely bare of feathers. Every last one was ripped out, his wings were really cut up.”

“Oh, plucking. That's what we call it in England.”

“Sam, I went to see Benny a few days ago,” Dean remembered suddenly. “He mentioned that he’d seen some of Gabriel’s scarring and it looked like they’d tried to remove his wings.”

“Yeah, he mentioned that. By the way,” Sam then directed what he was saying to Toni. “Gabriel doesn’t let people touch his wings. At all. If you do, he’ll run away.”

“Castiel’s the same with water. He will not get in a bath and hates showers but puts up with them.”

“They both despise cages. Refuse to go in them, so I don’t even bother trying.”

“And they fear women with long dark hair and black men.”

“That’s a lot of fears,” Lady Bevell pointed out, despite this being obvious. “This is all because of their being raised in a farm?”

“Oh, we’re pretty sure they were tortured,” Dean told her casually. “Gabriel told me at one point that they nearly drowned Castiel whenever he made noise, so he came to expect it whenever he spoke. He still flinches sometimes if he says something.”

Lady Bevell looked stunned. “Well… This is going to be a lot more involved than I expected,” She muttered to herself, but Dean heard her.

“You don’t have to be involved at all,” He told her defensively. “Sam’s been doing just fine with them. There’s really no reason to take them away from him, they’re just fine with him.”

“He no longer fits the qualifications to be allowed to own angels-”

“Qualifications for who? You and your hobbit gang or American laws?” Dean was getting more irate, making Sam nervous. He had no idea how this woman would answer to this, but from what he’d experienced, she would not take the berating lightly. “American laws state that anyone over 18 can adopt and own an angel. Your “Protective Services” agency isn’t even a real thing in America. It’s a British organization that doesn’t have much legislation overseas, so you can take your “qualifications” and shove them up your-”

“Dean!” Sam cut his brother off before he could finish his sentence, noticing the angry flush crawling up Lady Bevell’s cheeks. “Shut up, you’re not helping.”

“Sam, she-”

“Shut it. They _are_ still mine, you know.”

“Well, Dean, I will see you Sunday. Be sure to be around when we come by. Sam, I will see you again.” With that, Toni swept out of the room and Sam turned to glare at Dean. 

“What?”

“Don’t _what_ me. That was completely unnecessary!”

“It’s all true, though! I looked it up at one point, APS doesn’t have any legislation in the US. If they take Gabriel and Castiel, you can legally file against them for theft.”

“Dean, if you get them, there’s no point. And besides,” Sam heaved a sigh. “It’s not like I can really care for them well right now anyway. They’ll probably be better off with you.”

“Sam, you can’t just give up on them!”

“I’m _not_ giving up on them. I’m saying that APS may be right. With only one usable arm, I am… Probably unfit to take care of two special-needs angels. They’ll need attention I won’t be able to give them with being stuck in the hospital, needing physical therapy, and trying to work all at the same time.”

Disturbed by the arguing, Castiel shifted onto his side and curled his limbs closer to his body, whimpering softly in an attempt to get the brothers to stop. He went unheard, though, and the argument continued.

“Sam, I can take care of them, maybe long-term until you get yourself fixed up, but that doesn’t mean you have to relinquish ownership-”

“Dean, don’t you get it? I’m not _going_ to be able to ‘get myself fixed up’. I don’t have use of my right arm. It’s pretty much completely dead. I have to figure out how to do everything left-handed and one-handed. This is going to require _ages_ of therapy, it’ll take time that I won’t have to be able to take care of them. I’m going to have to get used to _everything_ being different and I can’t split my attention five thousand ways to make sure I don't set the angels off in an episode, manage to get them fed, deal with Gabriel’s sickness, adjust to work, and keep everything else straight. It’s best for them if you take ownership of them because I _can’t_ . They need someone to be able to take care of them, pay attention to their needs, and you’re the best fit for the job that I can think of. They already know and like you- Castiel speaks to you. It took _months_ for me to hear him say a single word and you got him to talk to you in, what, a day?”

“He cried for you the night you got in the accident,” Dean confirmed softly. “He wanted to stay with you.”

“ _Exactly._ After spending one day with you, he was already comfortable enough to talk. You’re obviously so much better for them than me-”

“But _you_ were the one that helped them! You took care of them and helped them deal with the majority of their trauma after you adopted them, _you_ got Castiel to talk in the first place.”

“But _you’re_ the one who’s touched Gabriel’s wings. He won’t let me go near them and in a week, he’s already let you wash them.”

“Because I bribed him with you, not to mention the fact that he was near panic the whole time and I had to drug him to calm him down.”

Castiel’s whimpering was growing into whining, squirming as he tried to get someone’s attention, hoping he could get the anger in the air to dissipate by distraction. Sam simply held him in place as he argued, ensuring the fledgling didn’t fall.

“Dean, they need someone who will be able to provide them with stable care. I _can’t_ . You _can_ , you _have_. You already have a routine, you said, and they’re happy with it. Sure, Gabriel sleeps all the time and Castiel spends a lot of his time on his own, but if you’re able to get him comfortable with showers, which you said you’ve already given him two, then he’ll be able to go out with you and help you at work. That’ll give him companionship and something to do, which is better than the two of them pattering around my empty house all day while I work on cases at the firm. So what if they’re exhausted after being away from home all day with you, that’s better than staying up all night from not doing anything. All we’ll have to do is move their stuff from my house to your apartment, you’ve already got sleeping arrangements figured out so we don’t even necessarily have to move their beds, just toys and clothes and things you didn’t take with you at first.”

“Except that they already know you and prefer you. You didn’t see how they lit up at the prospect of seeing you. You didn’t see how I had to bribe them with seeing you to get them to face their worst fears. Sam, you don’t see how much they need you-”

“Stop!” Castiel wailed. His wings were flared and fluffed and he thrashed around in Sam’s arms until he was let go, launching himself off the hospital bed and crawling to hide under the trench coat. The motion woke Gabriel, who had been just stirring. He sleepily lifted his head, noticing Castiel and pulled the coat farther over him as he took in his surroundings. He froze when he saw Sam, who had been watching Castiel flee from the arguing brothers, and his face lit up. He scrambled off the chair he’d been nestled in and Dean grabbed him, lifting him to Sam’s side. He giggled hoarsely as he was swung through the air and plopped on Sam’s stomach, causing the man’s lungs to empty with a huff.

“Sammy!” The angel cheered, a huge smile breaking his face in two. His golden wings were somewhat flared and angled forward. Sam moved his good arm to ruffle up his silky bronze hair, glad that this angel hadn’t heard the arguing. He hadn’t realized that Castiel was listening and judging by Dean’s guilty look as he glanced at the huddled trench coat, neither did he.

“How are you, Gabriel?”

“Better. But I’m sleepy _all the time_.” The angel pouted at the last sentence.

“Yeah, Dean told me. You got new medicine?”

“Uh huh. I take it not-crushed.”

“Dean’s giving it to you as a whole pill?” Sam glanced up at his brother.

“He chooses it like that. I ask him every time if he wants it pill or crushed and he always says pill.”

"He asks," Gabriel confirmed with a grin. A mischievous look grew on Sam's face. 

"Oh, so you're saying I don't ask?" He asked. The angel missed the undertone in his voice and nodded earnestly. "Well, that's just rude. I don’t think I quite deserved that,” With little warning, Sam flipped the angel on his back, pulled him closer to his chest to pin him with his sling, and tickled Gabriel’s belly, causing him to squirm and squeal.

The room was filled with squealing and laughter when the doctor opened the door. His knock had been drowned out and the noise was, quite honestly, concerning him. He came in to see Sam and Dean laughing as Gabriel struggled to get away from the moving fingers. Castiel was peeking out from the trench coat, a small grin on his face as he watched.

The doctor flickered the lights to announce his presence, having only been noticed by Castiel. All three paused, Gabriel still giggling but cut off by hiccups. Dean reached to take him away as the doctor walked in, closely followed by a nurse. This one was different from the one before and both angels stiffened, Gabriel’s grin falling from his face, though he still shook from hiccups. Sam’s hand tightened marginally around Gabriel, keeping him secure. Dean saw and moved from the rolling stool, which was the doctor's, to the seat next to Castiel. The little angel crawled onto his lap, wings puffy.

The nurse had dark hair, wavy and long. Dean could feel Castiel shaking.

“It’s not her,” He whispered, leaning down. “It’s not her, I promise.”

Castiel whimpered and tore his gaze from the nurse, staring instead at his brother, who had gone stock-still. With what little strength he had, he was ever-so-subtly shifting his wings underneath him. His hands were curled into fists and jammed under Sam’s hand. He was slowly lowering his head, keeping wide whiskey eyes glued on the woman.

“You’re gonna need to move the angel,” The doctor told Sam abruptly. “You shouldn’t be using that arm, for anything.”

“It didn’t even hurt,” Sam replied. “The pain meds-”

“Are for pain, not an excuse to possibly injure yourself even more.”

“Here, I’ll move him,” The nurse volunteered. She stepped over and reached for Gabriel, who flinched away with a squeak, arms flying up to cover his face, wings curled as tightly behind his back as he could make them. Which wasn’t very tight.

The nurse pulled away then tried again and this time Gabriel growled.

“I’ll get him,” Dean stepped in, anticipating _something_ going horribly wrong. He easily lifted Gabriel, the angel cowering against him immediately, hiding his face behind the unbuttoned flannel Dean wore. He sat back down and the angel squirmed so his wings were hidden behind the coat, arms wrapped around Dean’s torso as he pressed against the man. Dean rubbed a calming hand against his arm and shoulder, the other pressing against the angel’s hair and ruffling it up, scratching his head like a cat’s. Castiel wiggled his way next to Dean, smushed up against the edge of the chair, reaching for Gabriel. With a fearful glance at the nurse, he chirped softly. So softly, in fact, that Dean hardly heard it. Gabriel offered up a low whistle in return and Castiel patted his brother’s hip, the only part he could reach, then wedged himself farther back into the small gap between Dean and the chair.

"Trauma," Sam explained. "Don't worry about them, they'll be okay."

"I'm gonna go take them for a walk before it's time for Gabriel's meds," Dean murmured, feeling how Gabriel's shaking got harder. 

"Can I walk?" The fledgling asked softly. 

"Sure, just hold my hand." Dean stood up, holding Castiel as Gabriel slipped off his lap and reached up to Dean, his little hand clinging to two of Dean's fingers. The man took the two out, closing the door as the doctor began speaking to Sam again. 

"You two want a snack?" Castiel nodded and, as Dean looked down, Gabriel did too. “Alright, let’s go see if the cafeteria has anything you’ll like.”

Dean got a lot of strange looks as he followed signs to the cafeteria. He knew it wasn’t very common to bring angels in a hospital, but it wasn’t illegal and as far as he knew, there weren’t rules against it. They weren’t old enough to be legally required to be on a leash, so he couldn’t even get in trouble for that.

This reminded him of something Benny had said. Applying for disability, if the two qualified, would keep them from being leashed. Looking at the children, he couldn’t imagine tethering them to a cord. 

“Can I pet your angels?” Dean stopped at a somewhat shy female voice. He turned to see a teenage girl and a woman that looked to be her mother standing nearby. 

“Sorry?”

“Can we pet your angels? They’re very cute,” This was the mother, her voice was different. Sterner, firmer. 

“Um,” Dean looked at the two. “Are you guys okay with that?” Gabriel was pressing himself against Dean’s leg and looked up at the man, shaking his head. His wings were twitching under the scrutiny of the girl, who was staring at him. Castiel, however, shrugged a little, clinging to Dean as his grip shifted.

“I don’t know,” Dean told the women. “They’re pretty skittish.”

“Come on, I’ll be gentle, I swear.” This was the teen. “I won’t hurt them.”

Dean rested a hand against Gabriel’s head as the angel pushed his head against his leg. “Castiel, are you okay with that?”

The fledgling merely shrugged again, his wings shifting at the movement.

“Alright, I think you can pet this one,” Dean shuffled a little to get Castiel closer to the women. “Just… Be careful, please.”

The teenager’s eyes brightened and as she came closer, she leaned down and reached towards Gabriel, who flinched away with a frightened squeak.

“Rude,” The girl muttered as the mother stepped around her, reaching carefully for Castiel. The fledgling watched her hand carefully as she reached out to feel the arch of his wing. She rubbed a single finger against the bone then began scratching her fingers through his thick feathers.

“Neither of them are good with people they don’t know,” Dean explained to the teen. “Gabriel has problems with people touching him, so I wouldn’t be too surprised he didn’t want you touching him.

“He’s touching _you_.”

“That’s because he knows me. He doesn’t know you so he’s afraid of you.”

“That’s ridiculous, they’re not afraid just cause they don’t know us,” The teen scoffed. “They’re just animals.”

Dean stiffened, anger flooding through him. Glancing at the angels, he saw them watching him in some confusion and relief pushed past the anger in his veins. At least they didn’t understand what this kid had just said.

“I mean, come on, they can’t even speak.”

Something snapped in Dean at this and he held Castiel tighter, tucking Gabriel closer protectively. “Just so you know, they both can speak English just fine. But one is so sick right now that he can’t speak and the other is selectively mute. Now I suggest that you back off and leave and don’t make any more assumptions about my angels.”

With that, he pushed past the two, lifting Gabriel easily as he shifted Castiel to his hip. Almost immediately, the older angel began squirming to be let down. It was only once they turned a corner that Dean obliged, lowering him and clasping his hand, the tiny limb encompassed by his much bigger fingers. 

"Let's keep going," He murmured, glancing at the signs then realizing they were almost there. The entrance to the cafeteria was just a couple yards away. Despite the distance, though, Dean could hear the low din coming from the room. 

"Alright," He started, crouching down and setting Castiel on the floor so he could look at both angels. "It's gonna be loud and crowded in there. You're not gonna like it. Do you want me to carry both of you or Gabriel, do you want to keep walking?"

The angel looked over the door and shifted his weight on his feet. Castiel reached to Dean to be picked up again, which Dean denied, reassuring the now-pouting creature that he'd be picked up soon.

"Carry?" Gabriel asked, his voice soft. 

"Of course," Dean stood up and lifted both angels, settling them on his hips. For once, they were both awake and clung to his shirt as he walked. As expected, they both flinched when Dean walked into the cafeteria and the man paused, both to understand the layout of the room and for the angels to get used to the noise. 

Dean spotted a sign that said "Angels" and walked over to it, finding that there was a play area to drop angels off at, occupied by a few, and a small booth with a man selling angel treats and snacks. 

"Alright, so here's food for you guys. Why don't we go get something for me to eat, then we can come back and you can eat and play?" Gabriel nodded, staring at the play area and a few seconds later, Castiel did too. "Great, let's go."

Dean ended up getting a cheeseburger and a bottle of water, intending to share the drink with the angels and possibly using it to give Gabriel his meds. A quick glance at a clock told him they were getting close to time for another dose. 

Dean struggled to carry both angels and the tray until Gabriel started squirming. Cursing under his breath as he almost dropped it, he paused at a table and put the tray down, trying to secure his arms around the angels, setting Castiel on the table with the tray as he struggled with Gabriel. 

"Gabriel, what are you doing!?" He demanded, spluttering as he got a small foot in his mouth, the angel crawling over his head. He was positive he heard Castiel laughing. Eventually, Gabriel stopped moving and Dean found himself with the golden-winged angel sitting on his shoulders, fingers curled in his short hair. 

"Now you can carry," Gabriel told him, a satisfied note in his voice. 

"That's- That's great, kid, but why didn't you say something, warn me?"

Dean felt Gabriel's wing-tips, which were somehow jammed between his back and the backpack, move as the angel shrugged. With a long-suffering sigh, Dean picked Castiel and the tray back up and headed to the angel area. Gabriel rested his chin against his hands on Dean's head, a grin playing on his lips. This was fun, he was so tall! He could see everything!

Dean stopped at the food booth to buy something for the angels, picking out some brightly colored pieces that looked like cereal. The man told him that they were especially good for fledglings as they were packed full of nutrients they didn't often get in domesticity. 

"Apple!" Gabriel leaned forward, pointing to the fruit. 

"You want an apple?" 

Gabriel bounced on Dean's shoulders. "Please, Dean?"

"Okay, okay. An apple too, please?"

"Of course," The man bagged the cereal bits and fruit, then told Dean his total. Castiel held the tray with some difficulty while Dean dug his wallet out, but the angel beamed when Dean thanked him for his help. 

"Alright, time to get down," Dean told Gabriel as he put the tray and bag of food on a table, plopping Castiel down in a seat. He got the angel down and in the seat next to Castiel, taking a seat across from them and dishing out the cereal bits. With a careful glance around, he quickly took out his knife and quartered the apple, hiding the blade the moment he finished. He pushed the apple pieces to the angels then pulled out his own food, steeling himself for the disappointing fact that he would likely be less than impressed with the burger.

Castiel happily began eating, starting with the apple since it was familiar, but Gabriel was staring off at the play area, ignoring his food. 

"Hey. Gabriel," Dean worked to get the fledgling's attention. "You can play after you eat. If you eat fast enough, then you can play before you need your meds."

Gabriel spared one last look at the play area then turned back to face Dean, poking at the cereal bits and lifting one to his mouth. 

As it turned out, Castiel was quite picky about the bits, only eating the yellow and purple ones. He left the red, green, and blue in near little piles, carefully moving them as he came across one. Gabriel started off by eating all of them, handfuls at a time, but then began joining Castiel in putting his red, green, and blue pieces in the growing piles. Dean's didn’t watch them too carefully, more focused on his own food. With the angels discriminating against ⅗ of their food, they finished well before Dean. 

The man was surprised when Castiel leaned forward and placed a red piece in front of him, on the tray. Dean watched as he passed the red pieces out to the three of them, picking them up from the original pile and dropping them in front of each of them. He then did the same with blue, then green. Giving Dean a bright smile, the black-haired angel began eating the tri-colored pile of cereals, Gabriel following suit. 

"Uh, guys, these are angel food," He told the two. "I'm not supposed to have them."

Castiel and Gabriel paused, pouting at Dean. Unable to resist the combined force of two toddler's puppy-eyes, he sighed, picking a red piece up and popping it in his mouth. 

It was definitely not what he'd been expecting. He'd thought the piece would-be somewhat stale and bland, since it looked like cereal. 

Instead, it was hard. Very hard, which apparently the angels liked as, now that he was watching them, the brothers were crunching very loudly at each other, giggling. It was also surprisingly flavorful. He couldn't describe it, something berry he thought? 

The fledglings were both finished by the time Dean picked up his third piece, both staring at him as they waited for something. 

"You want these?" He asked, motioning to the rest of his pile. The two exchanged a glance then nodded and Dean gave the pieces to the two, carefully dividing them up by color like Castiel had so they could get equal amounts of color pieces. 

The different colors tasted different, which Dean discovered when he ate a blue piece after his first red. Soon enough, the two were finished with that food too, and there wasn't any left. 

"Alright, _now_ you can go play."

Castiel and Gabriel squirmed off the chair, both obviously excited to play. Dean turned in his chair, watching the children. His gaze eventually wandered as the two climbed on the jungle gym. He'd watched as they interacted with other fledglings that were there and, reassured that they would be alright, pulled his phone out, looking up APS's house regulations so he could prepare his apartment. If Sam wanted to play by their rules, so would he. 

"Mr. Winchester?" Dean looked up to see Lady Bevell standing there. Great.

"Yeah? What're you doing here? I thought you left."

"I was visiting a… Colleague. I was just leaving when I saw you here. Where are the angels?"

Dean motioned to the play area. "I brought them down for something before Gabriel needs his meds. They haven't been able to play with anyone but each other in a while, so I'm letting them have fun."

At that moment, a loud wail rang across the room. Dean recognized it and stood up, searching for Gabriel and Castiel. Muttering a quick "excuse me," to Lady Bevell, he hopped up and pushed his way to the play area, finally seeing Castiel. 

"Hey, Castiel," He called, shoving past people to get to the fledglings side. He looked scared. "What's going on? Where's Gabriel?"

Castiel tugged on Dean's sleeve, but the adult stayed put. "What's going on?" He repeated. "Words, kiddo. I need you to tell me what's happened."

Castiel looked at the people around them, obviously battling inside himself. After a few moments, he seemed resolved. "Gabbie! Wings!"

"Did something happen to Gabriel's wings?" Castiel nodded. "Show me where he is."

The angel tugged Dean's sleeve again and the man followed, allowing himself to be pulled to a hidey-hole that was styled to look like a cake. 

"Gabriel?" Dean peered inside. In the dim light, he could just barely see the fledgling's whiskey eyes glowing. 

Well, seemingly glowing. They were just reflecting the light. 

He was answered with a low growl and was reminded of just a few days earlier, when he'd tried to touch Gabriel's wings and he'd hid under the bed. 

"Hey, it's just me. It's Dean and Castiel, okay?”

A slightly less defensive growl rumbled in Gabriel’s throat as he stared at the entrance to the hidey-hole. He was bundled up in the very farthest corner, wings pushed behind him, pressed against the wall. A few gold feathers lay at his feet, disturbing him.

“Gabe- Can I call you Gabe?”

A soft mumble sounded as Gabriel moved his head. Dean couldn’t see what he did, only that the glow from his eyes disappeared.

“Kiddo, I can’t tell if you just nodded or shook your head. Can you use your words, tell me if that’s okay?”

“S’okay,”

“Okay. Okay, then, Gabe, can you tell me what happened? Why are you hiding?”

“Wings pulled.”

“Someone pulled on your wings?”

“Mhmm.”

“Aw, well, can you come out? I promise, me and Castiel won’t pull on your wings. We can get your medicine then go up and see Sammy again. Does that sound okay?”

“Mhmm.” Gabriel crawled forward and tentatively poked his head out, flinching back when he saw the crowd that had gathered around them, which Dean hadn’t noticed.

“Hey! Go away!” He shooed the people away. “He’s shy and scared and doesn’t like people he doesn’t know. Back off.” He knew he was being rude, which would have earned him a bitchface from Sam, but Sam wasn’t here right now. Gabriel was and Gabriel needed space, so space he would get.

Reluctantly, the crowd dissipated and Dean returned to the hidey-hole. “Gabe, please come out. The people aren’t there anymore, okay?”

The small tawny head reappeared and after a few seconds, he emerged from the hole and the angel crawled into Dean’s waiting arms. The man stood up, cradling Gabriel’s head against his head. He trooped back to the table, Castiel toddling dutifully beside him. Lady Bevell was nowhere to be seen as Dean sat Gabriel on the table. 

“Time for meds,” He told him as he checked his phone. He dug the pill bottle from his backpack and shook one out, helping Gabriel take it with the water bottle, which was now about half-emptied. 

The man tucked the bottle in then quickly swung the backpack on his back, having left it behind in his rush to find the source of the wails. 

“Alright, Gabe, do you want to walk?”

The fledgling shook his head. 

“Okay, do you want me to carry you then?”

“Sorta?”

“What does sorta mean?”

“Like-” Gabriel lifted his hands to motion to his shoulders. “-Sorta.”

“You wanna ride on my shoulders?” The angel’s face lit up as he nodded. “Alright, well hold on.”

He lifted the older angel first, carefully swinging him to sit on his shoulders. As he bent to pick Castiel up, he felt the short legs move from around his neck. He froze, then relaxed as he felt a weight settle on the top of the backpack. Tiny fingers wove through his hair again as he settled Castiel on his hip and the three were, once again, on the move.

A soft cheek rested against the back of Dean’s head as they rode the elevator. “You gettin’ tired, buddy?”

“No,” Gabriel’s voice was decidedly _not_ tired. “ ‘M gonna wait for-” He was interrupted by a yawn. “-For Sammy.”

“You do that, kiddo,”

They got off the elevator and Dean finished the last short piece of the walk to Sam’s room. Gabriel’s arms were wrapped around the top of his head and his cheek was pressed against his head. Due to the position, Dean could feel every time Gabriel yawned.

Which was a surprising amount. Like, Dean knew you yawned when you were tired, but this much?

He knocked lightly on the door and opened it, greeted by the doctor and Sam, nurse thankfully nowhere to be seen. 

“I was just about to leave,” The doctor told him. Dean’s response was interrupted by Gabriel.

“Sammy!” He called, leaning to try to reach for the man and almost toppling off the backpack. Dean and the doctor caught him and after setting Castiel down on a chair, Dean took the toddler and set him on Sam’s uninjured side.

“Hey, buddy,” Sam murmured, combing a hand through Gabriel’s soft bronze hair. “You look sleepy.”

“ ‘M not,” The angel mumbled through yet another yawn. “ ‘M gonna stay with you.”

“Oh, you are, huh?”

“Mhmm,” Gabriel’s whiskey eyes were slowly closing, despite his struggle to keep them open. “Wanna stay wi’ you.”

“That’s okay, you can stay with me,” Sam cuddled the sleepy angel to his chest as the little one snuggled closer to him. He pressed a kiss to Gabriel’s soft hair as the angel let out one last yawn, drifting off to sleep only a few seconds later. 

Castiel slipped off the chair and toddled to the side of the bed, trying to climb up it and whining when Dean scooped him up, stretching his arms to Sam. He cooed when he was set at the tall man’s hip, squirming to be closer to Sam’s chest.

“Well, I’ve gotta say, you have some seriously cute angels,” The doctor smiled. Dean didn’t realize he hadn’t left yet. “Well-behaved, too.”

“I got lucky with ‘em,” Sam murmured. “They’ve always been sweet.”

The doctor left with another soft grin, closing the door behind him.

After a while of just watching the two and talking quietly, Dean nodded to himself.

“It’s time I get these guys to bed, it’s getting late.”

“Alright, I’ll see you,” Sam carefully handed the angels to his brother. “Tell me how it goes Sunday, okay?”

“Of course,” Dean promised, accepting the sleeping Gabriel. “I wouldn’t think of doing anything else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SO SORRY this has taken so long to post!! Next chapter will be MUCH faster, I have a lot of it planned out already.
> 
> I do love Dean getting protective of the angels though.


	11. Chapter 11

_ Oww _ ,

Dean paused in his movements. He’d been making himself something to eat after waking up in the middle of the night, having not eaten since the burger in the hospital. 

This was the third time he’d heard a voice in his head, and so far, it all had something to do with Gabriel. Sure enough, when he turned to look at the angel, he was squirming, waking up.

“Hey, Gabriel,” He murmured as the little one woke up. To his surprise, Gabriel turned his head with a whimper, a pout on his lips. “Aww, do you hurt?”

Nod, accompanied by a soft groan. 

“Alright, come here,” Dean lifted the angel, somewhat disturbed by his soft whine. He moved his hand to pat his back just below his wings, where he usually liked. This time, however, this did not seem to be the case.

The moment Dean’s hand came in contact with the area, the angel  _ screamed _ . Dean quickly moved his head away from Gabriel’s as it seemed like he was wailing his lungs out. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks as he screeched. Dean tried to bounce him, moving his hand from his back, but the motion didn’t soothe him. Instead, it seemed to make it worse. 

Gabriel hunched over, clutching Dean’s shirt in his fists. His screaming didn’t quiet, even as he mashed his face against Dean’s shoulder. Mystified and, frankly, somewhat frightened, Dean walked around the apartment, trying to soothe the angel and hopefully prevent his screams from waking Castiel, though he was pretty sure that had already failed.

“I know!” He yelled as his neighbors pounded on his wall. His voice came out desperate and scared, which he wasn’t expecting and didn’t calm Gabriel at all.

“Okay, Gabe, please hush,” Dean pleaded. Unsurprisingly, the angel’s wailing didn’t quiet at all. Dean rubbed his back, trying to get the little one to calm down, but the cries only grew louder. Dean opted to just shush the angel, hoping maybe this would calm him down. He pressed a hand against Gabriel’s head, combing his fingers through the fledgling’s hair. 

He groaned as banging came from his door. He hurried to answer it, only to see Bela standing there, hair in a messy ponytail, dressed in fuzzy pajamas. 

“I know, I’m sorry,” Dean had to shout to ensure he would be heard over the angel’s shrieking. “I’m trying to calm him down, nothing’s working.”

Bela looked over the harried man and his sobbing angel and sighed. “Just… Try to calm him. I have a class in a few hours.”

Oh right, Bela was in college. 

“I’ll do my best. I’m really sorry, he just woke up and started crying. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Good luck,” Bela told him, then left. Dean closed the door and continued trying to calm Gabriel down.

“Hey, Gabe, look at me, okay?”

The angel didn’t respond, still hunched and screaming. 

“Gabriel, please stop screaming! Take a deep breath, just for a second. Your face is turning purple.”

To Dean’s surprise, this actually got through to Gabriel and he felt the little one take a shaky breath. 

“Okay, hold it, just for a few seconds?”

The angel obeyed and Dean sat him back in his arms, looking at him. His little cheeks, which were just getting some baby chub, were splotchy and red, covered in tear tracks. His lashes were clumpy and his eyes were full of tears, refilling the moment one escaped. 

“Okay, please don’t keep screaming. You can cry, but please don’t scream. There are people that live next to us that need to sleep. Okay?”

Gabe released his breath and nodded shakily, whimpers escaping him. His little chin trembled and Dean cupped a hand around his face.

“Thank you. Now can you tell me what’s wrong? You said you hurt.” The angel nodded. “Okay, what hurts?”

“W-win-gs,” The tiny voice that came out was thick with tears and broken by shuddering gasps for air. Before he could try to say anything else, Gabriel was cut off by another soft wail of pain, which he tried to muffle by pushing his face against Dean’s shoulder again.

“Okay, is it like an achy hurt or like they’re sore?”

“Dun-no. Hu-hurt.”

“Okay, okay,” Dean tried to soothe the little one before he could start screaming again. He was getting close, he could tell. “Is it all of your wings that hurt or what? You gotta tell me so I can help you.”

“T-the bot-tom. N-no touch part-t.”

“The base of your wings hurts?” Nod. “Okay, I can work with that. Alright, I can give you medicine or I can give you a hot pack or a cold pack. What d’you think?”

“H-hot?”

“Hot pack? Okay, let me see if I have a rice sock…” Dean ruffled through a few cabinets, not finding what he was looking for. With an impatient huff, he pulled a box of rice from a shelf then trooped into his room to find an unmatched sock that would be big enough. After he did so, he carried the sock and angel out to the kitchen, filled the sock with uncooked rice, tied a knot in it and tossed it in the microwave for a minute. He shifted Gabriel to hold him like a baby and rocked him gently as they waited for the microwave to go off. When it did, he simply grabbed the sock out and tested the temperature of it. Satisfied, he sat it on Gabriel’s belly as he took him back to the futon, where Castiel was sitting up and watching with wide, scared eyes. He took the sock off of Gabriel’s belly and sat down on the futon, moving the angel to lay on a pillow, back up. 

“Don’t freak out, okay? I’m hoping this will help.” Dean said this as he gently laid the sock right in between Gabriel’s wings, spreading the warm rice inside around to cause the material to spread out a bit. Due to Gabriel's small size and the sock being so big compared to him, Dean was about to move it so it also covered the area Gabriel had begun crying about. 

The angel sighed as the heat soaked into his aching skin. He had no idea why he hurt so bad, only that he did and that the rice sock was helping. He didn’t understand why Dean had put rice in a sock, but it was helping chase away his pain, albeit slowly, so he wasn’t complaining.

Dean checked the time as he patted Gabriel’s head and groaned. He had a few hours to get to work. Indecision twisted through him as he stared at the golden-feathered angel. He finally picked up his phone and dialed a phone number.

_ “You’ve reached the voicemail of Singer Salvage Yard and Garage. We’ve either missed you because we are not open or the phone line is busy. Please leave your name, number, and reason for calling, and we will get back to you as soon as possible _ ,” Came the voice of Rufus Turner, a good friend of Bobby’s that worked at the garage. After a bad accident a few years back, Rufus didn’t often work with the cars, instead manning the register and phone. He checked the voicemail box religiously, so Dean knew that he’d be fine just leaving a message.

“Hey, Rufus, it’s Dean. Can you tell Bobby that I won’t be able to come in today? Gabriel woke up screaming and I only just got him to stop. I’m not sure what’s wrong, just that he’s in pain. Thanks.” Dean hung up and set his phone down, combing his fingers through Gabriel’s hair, scratching his finger tips against his scalp, satisfied at the broken purr that sounded. It wasn’t as strong as normal, but at least the angel wasn’t crying.

Scratch that. Dean leaned down to look at the little one and he had tears still rolling down his cheeks, face twisted. 

“W’a’s happ’nin’?” Castiel finally moved over, his speech broken and choppy. “Gab?”

“Gab’s hurtin’,” Dean murmured, lifting the younger angel to his lap, holding him still as he squirmed, trying to reach his brother. Immobile, he whined. “Don’t bother him, he needs to stay still for a bit. Let him relax a bit, okay?”

“Mkay,” Castiel sighed unhappily, staring at his brother, who was still lying on his stomach. His arms were folded beneath his head, which was turned on its side. His eyes were still half open, darkened with tears that still crawled down his cheeks.The rice sock chased away some of his pain, but didn’t rid him of it.

As all hot things do, the sock cooled. With the absence of heat came the pain, returning with a vengeance. Gabriel whimpered as a spasm struck him and Dean, who had just begun to doze, shook himself awake and ran a hand through the little one’s hair. Castiel had slipped back to sleep and was bundled up next to a pillow, stubby wings wrapped around himself as best he could.

Gabe’s breath began catching as hot tears, which had just stopped, began rolling down his cheeks again. He whined as the muscles around his wings spasmed and Dean lifted the angel to lay across his lap, carefully removing the cooling rice sock. 

“Don’t scream, buddy,” Dean reminded gently as he ran a hand across the baby’s head.

“W-wings hurt,” Gabriel whimpered.

“I know, sweetie, I know,” Dean rocked the little one gently. “I’ll heat up the sock soon, you can’t have the heat on you all the time. Just give it a few minutes, okay? You’re getting close to your next dose so you’ll be able to fall asleep and wake up and not hurt, okay? You’re gonna be just fine.”

“Okay,”

Dean felt a small hand on his shoulder and turned his head to see that Castiel was standing next to him, using his shoulder for balance. His blue eyes were wide and he stared at his brother. 

"He'll be okay," Dean promised as the scared gaze shifted to his face. "He just needs to sleep and when he wakes up, everything will be alright."

Finally, Dean's alarm went off. He quickly got the medicine inside Gabriel, breathing a sigh of relief as the baby dropped off to an unhappy sleep, curled into a little ball. Dean shifted to lay down, pulling Gabriel to his chest and slinging his arm around him to steady him. Castiel crawled to his side and Dean turned the light off then wrapped his other arm around Castiel, slipping to sleep after the dark-haired angel did. 

He was woken by an unhappy whine. He opened his eyes to see Gabriel staring at him, tears filling his whiskey eyes. 

"Oh no," Dean mumbled, sitting up carefully to avoid waking Castiel as he shifted to pull both arms around Gabriel. "No, do you still hurt?"

With a whimper and a nod, Gabriel's confirmation had Dean quickly getting up. 

"I'm gonna get your rice sock, then I'm gonna go look for meds for you, okay?" He didn't look for an answer, simply cradling the angel as he tossed the sock in the microwave for the second time that day. Gabriel shifted in his arms to press his face against Dean's shirt, hot tears soon cascading down his face, soaked up by the material. Dean shushed his whimpers, rubbing his fingers through the child's hair as they waited. The moment the microwave beeped, Dean took the sock out and took Gabriel back to the futon. After getting him situated, he went to the bathroom in search of painkillers. 

He found some Ibuprofen that he took when he got headaches and shook a pill out, reading the directions on the back of the bottle. He didn't have any baby painkillers and Tylenol rarely helped for pain in his experience. He set the pill on the counter and, after finding his pocket knife (he didn’t have a pill splitter), cut it in two. He nudged the halves into his palm, got a cup of water, and returned to Gabriel’s side. Helping him sit up, the angel took one piece of the pill. Dean set the other aside for later. Just in case. With a quick glance at the still-sleeping Castiel, Dean shuffled back onto the futon. Gabriel, slowly and painfully, crawled onto his lap, lying face-down across his legs and Dean combed a hand through his hair, making sure the sock was still warm and able to keep the angel comfortable.

“Is the medicine helping?” He asked after a while of silence. Gabriel shrugged then hissed at the new spasm of pain the movement brought.

“Some,” He grunted softly. “Shouldn’t move.” His speech was much smoother than it was before. He must have been in so much pain that he couldn’t focus.

Dean hummed his acknowledgement, still petting the angel. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep so he grabbed his laptop, it was just on the table next to the futon, and opened it, setting it to the side and typing one-handed. Gabriel lifted his head to watch as Dean clicked on a website then opened a document. The words were plenty big enough for him to read and, in a large, bold font, the headline:  _ APS Guidelines For Housing Farm-Raised Angels _ .

Gabriel read the document as Dean did, albeit much slower and stumbling over some words. Sure, Sam had taught him, but it had been a while (before he’d gotten sick) that he’d read anything and it was difficult for him. 

“What’s that word?” Gabriel asked as he came across one that he’d never seen before and couldn’t sound out. 

“Which one?”

“The Wor- worcest-”

“Worcestershire?”

“Uh- Sure?”

“It’s some county or city in England.”

“Why’s that in a- a housing document?”

“Well, the full sentence is ‘According to a study conducted by the Worcestershire offices, farm-raised angels do best in open spaces with few, low-placed places to hide.’ So, what they’re saying is that they had a study done by APS people in Worcestershire to get results about how farm-raised angels do in different environments.”

“Why’re you reading this?”

Dean stiffened, something that did not go unnoticed by the young angel, who turned his head to look up at him. 

“That’s something I need to tell both you and Castiel. I was planning on doing it tomorrow- Today, but now with you hurting so bad-”

“Wake Cassie up and tell us,” Gabriel interrupted. “He’ll go back to sleep and I dunno if I’ll stop hurting later or not.”

Dean sighed, obviously fighting an internal battle before leaning over and gently shaking Castiel awake. The dark-haired angel sleepily lifted his head in response, blue eyes blinking open.

“Hey, I need you to wake up for a bit,” He told him. Castiel nodded and shifted to sit up, rubbing at his eyes.

“Gab?”

“Gabriel’s right here, he’s okay.”

Castiel nodded again, looking more awake, but before Dean could say anything, Gabriel burst into a coughing fit, shoulders shaking. His arms reflexively wrapped around his sides and Dean shifted him to sit upright, hoping it would help.

After a few minutes, Gabriel’s spluttering died down. “Ow,” He moaned with a whimper, his voice hoarse once more. “My chest hurts now too.”

"I thought you were over the coughing," Dean murmured as he grabbed the glass of water. Gabriel hadn't finished it earlier when he took the ibuprofen. 

"So-" Cough. "What did you wanna tell us?"

"Alright, so 8 AM isn't really the best time but you know how Sammy got hurt?" 

"Uh huh,"

"Well his shoulder is messed up really bad. He might not be able to use his arm. And there's this organization called Angel Protective Services that decided he didn't fit the standards of taking care of farm angels and they want to take you guys away from him and give you a new owner-"

"No!" Castiel protested. "No! Don't leave Sammy!"

"Hush, Castiel, I wasn't finished. I talked to Sam and the agent, that blonde woman that came in to his hospital room, and they said that they would inspect where I live, make sure it's up to their standards, then if things go right, I'll take ownership of you and you'll be able to live here with me and see Sam."

Both angels were silent until Gabriel spoke up. "So like right now but longer?"

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "What do you think of that, guys? I know it's not great, but if we didn't, then you guys could be given to someone that doesn't understand not to touch your wings or not to make Castiel talk unless he wants to."

Castiel shifted closer to Dean, closing his eyes as the man brushed a hand down his downy wings. 

"Don't wanna go to some stranger," Gabriel mumbled. "Don't wanna leave Sammy."

"I know, kiddo, I know. That's why I was looking at their housing regulations, so I can make sure the apartment is as good as I can get it and they can't deny me for housing issues." 

Castiel yawned as Dean pet his soft wings, the feeling soothing him despite the news. There'd be time to think about it later.

"Go back to sleep, kiddo," Dean murmured, though he suspected Castiel was already close enough. He wiggled so he could be as close to Gabriel as he could get and, moments later, his breathing evened out as he drifted. 

"You should try to sleep some too, get some that isn't medicated."

Gabriel shook his head, staring at the computer as he read the housing document. Dean shrugged and moved to let his fingers run through the young angels hair once more.

"Why do they wanna take us? I never heard of 'em 'fore now."

"Well, APS has files about who owns which angels. I don't know how extensive they are, but they've recorded that you and Castiel were born in a farm. They have limiting regulations on who can own a farm angel and with Sam being so hurt, he no longer fits those regulations. They’re trying to do what’s good for you guys, but they don’t know the real circumstances. I’m hoping that they’ll see that taking you guys away won’t help you at all. If we can just get me approved for ownership, then I’ll have you guys and we can see Sam as often as we want, you’ll just live with me instead.”

“Mkay,” Gabriel mumbled as he set his head back down and continued reading. Dean eventually got up and found a notebook and pen, writing a list of what he would need to do to the apartment to get it ready for the APS visit. This included getting covers for outlets, tying away the cords for the blinds on his window, making sure all medicines were put away, ensuring the smoke/carbon monoxide detector was working, and possibly investing in some burner covers for his stove. Half of these things hadn’t even occurred to him, considering that they were rarely home and the angels weren’t very rambunctious. It made sense, though, since most of these measures were to keep the angels safe.

Eventually, the alarm for Gabriel’s meds came again and the angel took them, huffing in irritation. He dropped off to sleep and, after making sure he was comfortable, Dean set to angel-proofing the apartment. Ensuring that all closet doors were closed, tracking down all the medicine bottles lying around (most of them over-the-counter things like painkillers or old prescriptions) and putting them away, checking the batteries in the smoke/carbon monoxide detector, and making his bed took about an hour, during which he realized that he didn’t have half of the things he would need to proof the apartment. 

After rolling his eyes and muttering about how he was such a “white girl mom”, he opened his laptop and went to the Walmart website, ordering things for delivery. After a bit, he added food items on. He tried to think about what he’d eaten in the past week and, with a wave of guilt washing over him, he realized that the angels were only getting one, maybe two meals a day if he ate breakfast. He definitely needed to do better, they were so skinny. Once the delivery order was sent and set to arrive in about another hour, he set to tracking down the dirty laundry lying around, tossing his and Gabriel’s and Castiel’s clothes into a basket. With a quick check that the two were fast asleep, he left to toss the clothes into one of the apartment building’s washing machines, setting an alarm on his phone to return just a few minutes before the load would finish. Conveniently, this was to happen just before the groceries were to arrive, so he could move the load to a dryer then pick them up and put them away.

This timing ended up working perfectly and the angels were still asleep after the groceries were put away. Dean put the burner covers on the stove and put outlet covers in all his unused outlets. Using some yarn he’d bought, he tied the blind cords up and away from small hands’ reach. Large Command hooks were hung near the door, the backpack taking one and Castiel’s coat taking another. He set to building one of the two three-cubby shelves he’d bought, the angels’ clothes set to take up residence inside, one cubby-shelf for each angel. Toys were packed up and put away as the few clean changes of clothes the angels had left were put inside their shelves. Dean moved the board games to live on top of one of the shelves and it was then that his alarm for the clothes in the dryer went off.

After fetching the clothes, he brought the basket back to the apartment, planning to fold them in just a few moments. He set the basket down near the futon and turned his back to go close the apartment door. When he turned back around, Castiel had disappeared from his spot on the futon.

Dean frowned and searched for the angel, calling his name to no response. Trying to tamp down his nervousness - he'd probably gone off to find a comfy spot to sleep - he sat down and started folding the clothes. They were still warm from the dryer. 

Which brought him to his discovery of where Castiel had gone off to. After folding only a few garments, a pair of dark, dark wings greeted him. Castiel  _ churr _ ed softly and snuggled into the warm fabrics as Dean exposed him. 

"What, you like warm laundry?" He asked as he looked at the little one. Castiel smiled and ducked his head under a shirt. Dean chuckled and grabbed something else to fold. “As soon as I finish this, we can play. Does that sound good?”

Castiel perked up and nodded quickly, crawling out of the basket and pulling a shirt out. He struggled with it until Dean noticed what he was trying to do.

“Are you trying to fold too?” Nod. “Well, that’s my shirt. It’s too big. Take this one and I’ll show you.” Dean took his shirt from the angel’s hands and gave him one of his own. He set to showing him how to fold it and the angel copied his movements very carefully, but still struggled to get it right.

“Try one more time,” Dean encouraged after an attempt turned out poorly. Castiel nodded and did, this one coming out a lot better. “Good job!” Dean congratulated. “Now put it on your pile, it’s this one.”

Castiel obeyed and, soon enough with his faltering help, the folding got finished. He assisted in putting the clothes away then Dean finally asked what he wanted to do.

“Cards?”

“Sure, we can play cards. What game?”

Castiel thought for a second, then made grabby hands for the deck Dean was holding. Dean handed it to him, finally understanding that sometimes the angel couldn’t say what he wanted. Castiel messily set up Speed on the carpeted floor and Dean knelt down in front of him, on the opposite side of the cards as he counted out the cards that went to each person. Dean could see his lips moving as he put the cards in piles then handed one to him.

“How many are in this stack?” He asked.

“T’enty!” Castiel replied, brightening. Then his face fell. “I think.”

“Well, let’s check.” Dean started counting the cards out loud, smiling proudly at the fledgling when he finished. “Twenty! Good job, you counted right.”

Castiel’s face lit up and he bounced excitedly on his knees, wings fluttering and poofy in his happiness. Because he was so happy about it, Dean intentionally let him win the game of Speed, just to see his ecstatic expression, wings nearly vibrating and sending him off balance. Laughing, Dean helped the fledgling right himself and set up another game of Speed. After two more, Castiel looked shyly up at Dean.

“What is it?”

“C’n we… ‘M hungry,”

Dean checked the clock and flushed slightly. Of course he was hungry, he hadn’t eaten anything all day and it was already almost noon. “Alright, let’s go see what we have.”’ He stood up and was about to go to the kitchen when he felt a tug on his pants leg. He looked down to see Castiel reaching to be picked up and obliged, resting the little one on his hip. Castiel cooed softly as he snuggled his head in the crook of Dean’s neck, where it attached to his shoulder. Dean lifted a hand to pet the fledgling's wings and found that he’d shoved his fingers into his mouth again.

“Why do you do that?” He asked as he searched through the newly-filled cabinets for something for a meal. “Suck on your fingers.”

Castiel shrugged and didn’t move his hand from his face. He watched as Dean eventually set to making French toast and was eventually set on a counter when Dean needed both hands.

“Wanna help crack eggs?” He asked. Castiel nodded. “You’re gonna need both hands and to wash them.”

Castiel crawled over to the sink and carefully turned it on, wetting his hands and scrubbing soap onto them. As he was rinsing them off, he leaned too far and, overbalanced, fell into the sink with a frightened yelp.

Turning at the cry and subsequent screaming, Dean fished a terrified Castiel from the sink. He was thrashing in the adult’s hands and Dean, seeing that the sink had begun to fill up, understood why. He quickly turned the faucet off and struggled to carry the angel to the closet, where he pulled out towels and wrapped him up tight. The sobbing creature still flailed and Dean could see that he was losing himself to his own mind.

“Hey, hey,” He crooned, trying to pull the fledgling back as he smoothed his hand over dripping dark hair. “You’re safe. You’re just fine, nobody’s gonna hurt you.”

Castiel’s terrified struggles slowed, though his breathing did not. Dean thought this was a good thing until he noticed the vacant look on the fledgling face. It was so similar to Gabriel’s in that shower…

Eventually, Castiel fell still. His blue eyes were still unfocused and his breathing was still near hyperventilation, but at least he didn’t run the risk of hurting himself anymore. Unsure of how it would be received but knowing he needed to do something, Dean nudged his hands under the towel-wrapped body and lifted Castiel. There was no hint that the movement had even been registered by the angel, but Dean took that as a somewhat good thing and carried him to the bed after grabbing new clothes. Even if he was lost in his own mind, seeing God-knows-what, Dean needed to get him out of his soaked clothes before he had two sick angels on his hands.

Castiel didn’t make any hint of noticing as Dean changed him. He was just a limp creature, staring at nothing and everything. Unresponsive to Dean trying to speak to him. Eventually, Gabriel woke up and with it, came another problem.

As had become the norm, the golden-winged angel woke with a pained moan.

“Please hold on, Gabe,” Dean mumbled. “Cas isn’t doing so well.”

“Wha’s wrong with ‘im?” With a low groan, Gabriel pushed himself up. “Where is ‘e?”

“He’s just right here,” Dean told him, showing him how he held the black-haired, unresponsive fledgling, recognizing the protective instincts of an older brother. “He’ll be alright. He’s just doing what you did yesterday, when you crawled up the shower curtain.”

“Wha’ happ’n’d?”

“He fell into the sink while he was washing his hands. With his water phobia-”

“He panicked. Prob’ly got water in his mouth.” Achingly, Gabriel crawled over to be next to Dean and reached out to Castiel, resting a small hand on his little brother’s forehead. “Cassie-bug look a’ me,” He turned the fledgling’s head, staring straight into his vacant, empty eyes. He stilled and, a few seconds later, fell back. He landed on his back and immediately arched, face twisting in stabbing pain as a scream, forcefully muffled in his throat, tore at his vocal chords. Dean scooped him up and laid him across his belly so as not to aggravate his pain any more than he just did.

“Here, I’m gonna take your shirt off, see if there’s anything that might show why you’re hurting so bad,” Dean warned him. Gabriel nodded slightly, fists curled tightly, painfully tightly, as Dean carefully lifted the bottom of the shirt and slid it up and over his wings, then his head. He paused as he looked at the area Gabriel had been complaining about.

“What?” Gabriel whimpered. 

“Well, I can see why you  _ said _ you hurt so bad, but I still have no clue  _ why _ you hurt so damn much.”

It was two stripes, radiating down from the base of his wings. The pale skin between each wing was marred by dark bruising, as was the area circling the reddened skin. The streaks started from just below his shoulder blades and reached almost to his hip bones, dark and painful-looking. 

“Alright, you know what? Once we get Castiel back to us, we’re gonna take you to Ellen. I don’t know what this is, but it doesn’t look pleasant.”

“M’kay,” Gabriel groaned, stiffening as a spasm that Dean could _see_ ran through the muscles along his spine and through his wings. The fledgling let out a soft cry that grew louder as his pain got worse and worse. He tried to muffle it by bundling up the blankets clenched in his fists and shoving them against his mouth. Dean set the still-vacant Castiel on the futon and threw the rice sock in the microwave, watching worriedly as Gabriel hunched over himself, wings quivering and crying out more as the bending of his back made his pain even worse. Unbidden tears crawled down his cheeks, which had gone red and splotchy as he began crying. As Dean waited for the microwave to beep, a low, continuous moan started in the back of Gabriel’s throat, volume increasing to a howl as Dean came over with the sock. After testing the heat, he carefully laid it across Gabriel’s bare back. He knew that wasn’t the best idea but he didn’t want to try to wrestle the shirt back on him and he couldn’t bear the painful, heartbreaking noises coming from the little one any longer. 

His wings, already arching up, twitched and arched just a bit more as the heat was applied. Peering past the puffed-up feathers, Dean watched as Gabriel’s expression untwisted, just a little, as the heat worked to soothe aching muscles. Satisfied that the sock wouldn’t move, Dean got up to grab one of the squeezy applesauce pouches and opened it, handing it to Gabriel as a snack. He couldn’t make anything at this point, with a broken angel on one side and a suffering angel on the other, but he could get some calories into Gabriel. The fledgling accepted the applesauce and sucked on it, eyes closing as he tried to get his muscles to relax and alleviate some of his pain.

With one angelic crisis averted, Dean turned his attention to the other. Castiel was curled up on his side, wings lying on the futon behind him, completely still for once. His eyes were unfocused and open, his lips slightly parted, one hand in front of his face.

It was exactly as Dean had left him. He hadn’t moved an inch.

Dean pulled him onto his lap and there was nothing to show that he’d even registered the movement. He just flopped limply against the human. If it wasn’t for his panicky breaths and racing heartbeat, he would think Castiel had died. As it was, he wasn’t being very comforting. 

“Hey, Castiel,” He murmured softly, combing a hand through his black hair. “Hey, I don’t know what you’re seeing but come back to us, okay? We’re worried about you.” His hand moved to rub along the tips of Castiel’s dark feathers, hoping the sensation would bring him back to the present as he moved to run his fingers through the thickest parts of his wings, fluffing the feathers and leaving them in disarray. At some point, Gabriel began whistling while Dean spoke his muttered, nonsensical pleas for Castiel to bring himself out of his mind.

Finally, after far too long and Dean feeling like he would crawl out of his own skin if Castiel didn’t come back, the fledgling closed his eyes and hunched over on himself, wings wrapping tightly around himself and fingers shoved into his mouth.

“Cas?” Dean whispered so he didn’t disturb him. “Castiel? Can you hear me now?”

Castiel opened his eyes and looked straight at Dean, who was taken aback by the dark, deep gaze. Castiel suddenly looked older and more tired than he’d ever been. Due to the angle of the lighting, shadows were cast over his eyes to make him look even more worn down. Thus, Dean did the only thing he could think to- He hauled the fledgling onto his lap and cuddled him close, smoothing his hair back and holding him tight before grabbing and opening the other applesauce pouch he’d grabbed.

“Eat this,” He murmured. “You said you were hungry earlier.” He nudged it to Castiel’s lips and the angel began eating the applesauce with little struggle, sucking on it while Dean held the pouch, looking up at him as though he were a baby with a bottle. This little piece of imagery definitely was not dispelled when, after finishing the applesauce, Castiel turned to face Dean’s stomach, holding his shirt in one hand, the other returning to his mouth.

“Okay guys, you know what? We’re gonna call Ellen and get Gabe an appointment for today cause his back looks really bad and she might be able to help.”

“Gon’ need your phone,” Gabriel mumbled, reaching as hard as he could to get Dean’s phone from its spot near one of the pillows on the futon and passing it over so the human didn’t have to stand.

“Thank you, Gabe,” Dean murmured as he dialed a number he decided would soon need to be saved in his contacts.

“ _ Critter Care Veterinary, how may we help you _ ?”

“Um, I’d like to make an appointment for an angel. As soon as possible and with Ellen, please.”

“ _ Angel… _ ” The peppy voice that had answered the phone dropped thoughtfully. “ _ Our earliest is today at 2:15. It’s the last angel appointment we have available, but we have multiple available tomorrow. _ ”

“Today, please. Today is best. You said 2:15?”

“ _ Yup. Alright, I’ll need the name of the angel and the owner. _ ”

“Angel is named Gabriel and his owner is Sam Winchester, but since Sam isn’t able to, I’ll be bringing him in. I’m Dean Winchester.”

“ _ Alright, and… If he’s on any medication, please bring that in as well as information about his eating habits and his papers. _ ”

“I’ll do that. Is that all?”

“ _ Yes, sir. _ ”

“Okay, thanks. Bye.” Without waiting for a reply, Dean hung up. “Okay, Gabe, we’re gonna be skipping our one o’clock dose so we can go to see Ellen. After that, it’s up to you if you want to take it and throw your schedule off or if you just want to wait. That okay?”

“Sure,” Gabriel muttered, voice taut with pain.

“Good. Let me go finish making that French toast so it doesn’t go to waste.”

Dean didn’t remove Castiel from his lap. Instead, he hefted the little angel onto his hip. “Still wanna crack some eggs?”

Castiel shook his head and Dean shrugged, setting him on the counter, carefully far away from the sink. He ended up moving him back to the futon once he turned the stove on and cooked the food as quick as he could so he could get some more nutrition into the two. Once it was finished, he carried both to the table to eat and let Gabriel put on as much syrup as he wanted. It took a lot for him to even sit up and he was hunched over like an old man on a rainy day, but he managed it. Castiel didn’t seem to have any difficulty, eating his food silently and stoically after Dean cut it up for them. No matter how mature the two seemed, he wasn’t going to trust anyone that didn’t look over the age of ten with a knife. As they ate, Dean’s alarm went off but he shut it off, ignoring it for once in favor of feeding the angels and making sure Gabriel wouldn't be knocked out for his appointment. 

They finished and Dean dressed the now-syrupy Gabriel in clean clothes, taking extra care with the t-shirt he pulled on the fledgling, offering him painkillers once he was dressed, which he took gratefully. Castiel, however, had regressed into total silence and he sat stock-still on the futon, wings curled up so he resembled a small Batman. He watched his brother and Dean with dark eyes and a darker expression. 

Dean was… he didn't want to say  _ disappointed _ but Castiel had been doing so good. He'd become more social and open, he'd had a really verbal day yesterday… He hated to see all of that progress thrown away by an accident. Shaking his thoughts away, Dean finished getting the angels ready to go. He came over to Castiel with his small shoes as Gabriel was pulling his own on. 

"Do you want to put your shoes on or should I?" Castiel reached for the shoes and Dean handed them over, watching as the young angel pushed his feet into them. As he did so, Dean slung the backpack and trench coat over his shoulder, picking the angels up last as he left the apartment. 

Pressed up against him as he was, it was impossible for Dean to miss Cas' flinch at his touch, despite the angel's attempt to hide it. 

"I'm not gonna hurt you, Castiel," He murmured as he walked to his car. "I'm not going to hurt either of you."

The car ride was full of Gabriel whistling and chirping at Castiel, who didn't verbally reply. Dean couldn't tell if he did with his wings- he was too small to see out of the corner of his eye and he wasn't going to look away from the road with precious cargo. The radio filled the silences between Gabriel's noises, both of which were welcome. 

Whatever Gabriel was saying must have soothed Castiel some because, when Dean opened the door, he reached up to be picked up. Gabriel had returned to his position on his stomach, having found when this started that it was most comfortable. Dean carefully slipped an arm underneath him, taking care not to brush the bruises or red areas concealed under the shirt. He carried the two in and stopped at the desk, checking in and handing over Gabriel's papers so they could confirm who he was. Having been a farm angel and already seen Ellen plenty of times, check-in was fairly quick. 

Dean found a seat and laid Gabriel across his lap, Castiel curled in a small, shaking ball, clinging to the human. After setting him on the arm rest of the chair, he buried a hand in each angel's hair, knowing how much it calmed them, like petting a kitten. Gabriel carefully leaned his head into Dean's hand, only moving a little so as to avoid aggravating the bruised mess that his back was. At the feeling of the angel's head pushing against his hand, Dean shifted to see if he still had a fever. He was still warm, but nowhere near the dangerous heat he'd formerly had. 

While they waited, a young woman and an angel on a leash came out, followed by Ellen. The angel had a splint on one wing, which held it folded and still, and his hands were clasped in front of him, his head down. Despite that, he was still taller than the human leading him, who was fairly short anyway. Uneasiness stole over Dean and he subtly shifted his hand to turn Gabriel’s head so he wasn’t looking toward her when he saw that the woman had long dark hair- he did not want to deal with a pain-fueled angelic freak-out. He did the same to Castiel.

“Alright, give these to Theo when he’s in pain,” Ellen was saying as she handed a pill bottle to the woman. “And bring him in in about 2 ½ weeks so we can re-evaluate and see if it’s time to get the splint off. After we do get the splint off, I’m going to refer you to a rehabilitation therapist to work with Theo so he can fly right again. His name is Benny Lafitte-” 

“The owner of Benny’s Dining?”

“Yeah, same Benny. He’s actually planning on changing the name to Benny’s Dining and Angel Rehab, last I heard. So, if you want to go meet with him and talk to him, see what might be done, you can go ahead and do that. We can try to set up a meeting with him at some point, but we’ll worry about that later. Has Inias gotten over that cold yet?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty much cleared up. The zinc you recommended helped really well, thanks.”

“Oh, no problem. I’ll let you get out of here so Theo can rest. See you later, Meg.”

“See you, Ellen,” ‘Meg’ replied as she and Theo left and Ellen accepted a clipboard from the receptionist. She muttered to herself as she skimmed through the list of appointments, stopping at the next one she had.

“Gabriel?” She looked up and peered through the lobby. Dean offered her a slight smile when their eyes met. “Let me get the room cleaned up then I’ll send Marie to call the next appointment back.”

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a young woman came out.

“Gabriel and Dean Winchester?” She called. Dean stood up, carefully situating Castiel and Gabriel to carry them, tried to ignore Gabriel’s whimpers of pain, and followed the girl to an examination room. “Dr. Harvelle will be with you shortly,” She chirped and left. Ellen came in soon after with a knock on the door, dressed in scrubs and a white coat.

“What brings you in today?” She asked. 

“It’s Gabriel,” Dean started. Said angel was laying across his lap while Castiel was bundled up with his trench coat in the other seat. “He woke up in the middle of the night screaming in pain. Hot packs help but the moment they cool down he’s crying again. I had to take him to the ER a few days ago because of his fever and they gave me a fever reducer that puts him to sleep so he’s gotten some relief through that, but he’s still in constant pain. I checked to see what the problem was a few hours ago, cause he said he hurt at the base of his wings and…” He shook his head. “You just need to see it yourself.”

He eased Gabriel to sit up and, despite the painkillers, pained tears began creeping down his cheeks as the t-shirt was eased off. “Gonna get dehydrated if this keeps up,” Dean muttered.

“Oh my…” Ellen gasped at the sight of the ugly bruising. 

“Yeah. Have you seen anything like this before? I have no clue what would have caused this.”

After some examination and Dean warning her not to touch, Ellen sat back, shaking her head. “I’ll have to check, but I don’t think I’ve seen this before… Let me bring Ash in, he’s finishing up an examination right now.”

“Go for it,” Dean murmured as Gabriel tensed with a soft cry. “Meds wearing off?”

“Mhmm,” Gabriel whimpered, chewing on his knuckle in an attempt to distract himself from the pain.

“Hey, no, don’t chew on yourself. You’ll hurt yourself.” Dean eased the fledgling’s hand from his sharp fangs. “Ellen, do you have something?”

“We have some teethers in the back, I’ll go bring one in.”

She left and returned with the teether, Dean thanking her and giving it to Gabriel, who immediately began gnawing as tears slipped down his cheeks. While Ellen was gone, getting Ash, Dean saw more of those spasms running through Gabriel’s muscles, each one causing him to cry even harder until he was a sobbing mess in Dean’s arms. All Dean could do was hold the angel close, one hand against his head as he tried to soothe him. This was what Ellen and Ash walked into, Gabriel soaking Dean’s shirt with his tears, back arching painfully. Ash’s eyes widened as he saw the bruises, which had extended to reach down to the waist of Gabriel’s pants and covered most of his back. 

“Have you seen anything like this before?” Dean asked over Gabriel’s weeping. “He’s extremely sensitive to touch and all that helps is a hot pack.”

Ash’s mouth twisted in thought as he pulled a stool over to lean over and look at Gabriel closer. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen this, but I’ll look for accounts of this kind of bruising. You said you don’t know what might have caused this?”

“Right. He hasn’t fallen off of anything except for intentionally rolling off the futon in my apartment but he landed face-first then and was fine. Some angel pulled on his wings yesterday while we were at the hospital visiting Sam but after he calmed down, he seemed fine. He just woke up screaming and crying in the middle of the night and it took ages to get him to quit screaming. He hasn’t screamed much since, but he’s almost always crying until I get a rice sock on him.”

“Rice sock?”

“Rice in a sock and heated up, they’re pretty effective,” Ellen answered and she handed Dean a hot pack. He hadn’t noticed her leave or return, but gratefully maneuvered Gabriel to lay across his lap and set the heat against the bruises, using the towel the pack was wrapped in as insulation. Gabriel’s wings twitched as the heat was applied, which only sent a fresh set of tears streaming down his cheeks, but he eventually calmed down as the heat eased his pain. 

“Alright, drink this please,” Ellen murmured, holding a bottle with a straw up to Gabriel’s lips. He obeyed and, when he got the first taste, his eyes flew open and he started drinking faster, hands moving to hold the bottle. “Sugar water,” Ellen explained at Dean and Ash’s confused looks. “He’s a serious sugar junkie.”

Castiel’s head, previously buried by the coat, emerged at the sound of sugar, eyes round with interest.

“Oh, hi, Castiel,” Ash greeted. Castiel, for once, didn’t wave in reply and his gaze shifted from the mulleted man to the blonde woman behind him and back. “What is it you want?” He asked softly, coming closer to the angel.

“He was washing his hands earlier,” Dean murmured following Castiel’s silence. “The sink was filling up and he accidentally fell in. I got him out real fast but he froze up. He ended up completely lost in his own head for a while. It was like he didn’t even know Gabriel or I was there. He eventually came back but he doesn’t say a thing and he flinches when I touch him and he hardly acknowledges anything I say.”

“Sounds like a flashback,” Ash muttered in reply. “Did you have an episode?” He asked Castiel, who nodded almost imperceptibly. “Poor guy. You know they’ve had some serious trauma. Based on what Sam told me, they have flashback episodes where they freeze up and, as you said, get lost in their minds. They both do it. As far as we’ve been able to gather, falling in bodies of water, even just a little puddle, is a trigger for Castiel. Gabriel’s tend to get triggered by someone pulling on or messing with his wings too much. Too much exposure to their Bad people looks can do it too, but that’s kind of a toss-up.”

“Gabriel had one of these ‘episodes’ too, earlier yesterday. He and Castiel had helped me at work and got all oily. Castiel is able to handle showers so he went by mostly alright. He needed some breaks, but he managed. Gabriel was fine up until we had to clean the oil out of his wings. He tried to do it himself but realized it would take too long. He gave me permission to do it so long as I was fast but gentle-”

“He let you touch his wings!?”

“I bribed him with seeing Sam and he was on the edge of bolting the entire time. Anyway, I was almost done and my hand brushed against some of the scarring near the base of his wings and he was  _ gone _ . He scrambled up the shower curtain and perched on the rod and he got this vacant look. He only responded to me after I started saying stuff about Castiel. He was saying stuff about how ‘they’, and I don’t know who ‘they’ were, but he was talking about how someone thought his feathers were pretty and how they would ‘bring in a nice sum’. He didn’t say much past that, he was crying and panicking way too hard to be able to talk.”

“Sounds like one,” Ash murmured. “Maybe we should call Benny, see if he’s seen this. It’s a long shot but…”

“I’ll take him over after this,” Dean decided. “They need something to eat, too. They had French toast earlier but it’s been a few hours.” 

“You look exhausted, Dean,” Ellen cut in.

“I  _ am _ , El,” He groaned. “All three of us have been up every three hours cause that’s when Gabe’d wake up crying after his meds wore off. Cas fell asleep quick enough after Gabe quieted down, but…” His head fell back to hit the wall with a thump. “I just don’t know what’s going on with him and it doesn’t help cause APS wants to take them away from Sam so in order to get them, I have to be approved to take farm angels.”

“Wait, why does APS want to take them? He was just in a car accident, that shouldn’t break their regulations,” Ash frowned. Of course he would know about APS and their stupid regulations.

“Apparently, some nerve in his shoulder was damaged beyond repair and the doctors are saying Sammy won’t ever have full use of his right arm again. APS came by and said he had three days to find a new owner or they would be rehomed out of his control. He didn’t know who else to give them to. He wasn’t even considering me. I offered to take them.”

By now, Gabriel’s cries had quieted and he was lying across Dean’s lap, cheek pressed against his leg. His breathing was stuttery and uneven, but with the heat, his pain had eased to a bearable level. 

“You  _ offered _ ?” Ellen asked in disbelief.

“Yeah.” Dean dropped his gaze to where he was playing with Gabriel’s tawny hair, the little one totally exhausted by his constant pain. He’d finished his bottle of sugar water and dropped it on the floor and, seeing it, Ellen reached to grab it. “They’ve grown on me.”

Castiel reached out and lightly tapped Ash’s knee. So lightly, in fact, that he hardly felt it. When he’d successfully gotten Ash’s attention, he pointed to where Ellen had put the empty water bottle. Ash glanced back and frowned a bit before he understood.

“You want a sugar water?”

Castiel nodded quickly and Ash left to grab it. He returned quickly with a bottle and straw and helped Castiel get it to rest on the seat so he could drink it easily. Seeing Ash taking care of him reminded Ellen that this was an appointment, not a gossip session, and she got back to business.

“Have you given Gabriel and medicine for the pain?”

“Half a pill of ibuprofen,” Dean replied. “All the medicine he’s prescribed or taken since I’ve had them is in the backpack.”

“When was the last time he needed the inhaler?” Ellen asked as she looked over her clipboard of information.

“It was the day after I took them, so last Sunday?”

“Alright…” She wrote that down. “And is he still taking the Ropazin?”

“No, the guys at the hospital had me stop giving them to him since they were anti-bacterials and they didn’t seem to be doing anything. He prescribed him Acedastin instead and that’s been keeping his fever down but we’re almost out of that.”

“Alright, and you said half a pill of Ibuprofen?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay…” Ellen thought for a second. “I’m not going to prescribe any more pills because he’s been taking so much recently, and you won’t be able to apply a topical cream, so… A day after you finish the Acedastin, if he’s still in pain, bring him back in and we’ll reassess, okay?”

“That works.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more. We’ll be looking into it, see what we can find out about this. I’ll call you if we find anything, sound good?”

“Yeah. And it’s fine, Ellen, this is just weird.”

Ellen got Gabriel checked out and Dean took the two out to his car to leave. He didn’t know where Castiel had gotten his bottle of water, but he wasn’t arguing. The angel looked perfectly content as he drank it and Dean didn’t want to mess that up.

Not when his vacant, nearly dead look still haunted him.

Dean drove quickly to Benny’s and took the two in, getting seated and ordering food fairly quickly. The service at Benny’s was always pretty fast. While he waited, his gaze traveled over the restaurant. There were plenty of tables with angels, but many of them had collars, even ones as young as Castiel. Not many were on leashes, due to Benny’s not requiring leashes inside the restaurant. There were some that didn’t have collars, but the oldest of them was just growing one or two primary feathers- he’d have a collar soon. Dean spotted Duma sitting on a stool in the corner of the room, accompanied by Josiah, both wearing blue metal bracelets. Josiah had a silver bracelet glinting on his other wrist. They were signing back and forth, occasionally laughing. Duma looked much lighter and more at ease than she had when Dean met her, which was probably a good thing. While he watched, Elijah ended up showing up, slowly coming into the dining area from the kitchen entrance, leaning heavily on a crutch. He, too, wore a blue bracelet but, like Josiah, had a silver one as well. Spotting him, Duma hopped up and helped him to her seat, going into the kitchen and grabbing another stool that she put down next to him and sat on. 

Looking around, Dean realized that there were more angels with blue bracelets than he’d previously thought, and none of them wore collars. He saw Rebecca talking to someone near the door and another carefully carrying a tray of food. His rich orange feathers looked thin and patchy and Dean thought this might be Joshua, the angel who had been stripped and was healing. 

The angel that might be Joshua came over and Dean realized that it was his food being carried. 

“Bacon burger deluxe, two mixed fruit bowls, and a small bowl of Benny’s Angel Special on the house,” He listed as he set the dishes down. “Is that right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean replied. “What’s the Angel Special for?”

“Mr. Benny recognized you from the kitchen. He said to ‘give them to Dean with this order’ and that he’ll be out to talk to you once this rush calms down.”

“Okay, thanks. Can you tell Benny that, if he’s got time, I might have to steal him for a bit?”

“Of course,” Possibly-Joshua gave him a tight smile then a more genuine one directed at Gabriel and Castiel, followed by a concerned look at how Gabriel was slumped against his brother. He then left, weaving through the crowd to return to the kitchen, and Castiel plucked a piece of cantaloupe out of his bowl. It took some prompting, but eventually, Gabriel began eating too.

Just as Dean was finishing, Benny slipped out of the kitchen and appeared at the table.

“Hey, Dean. What did you need me for?” He asked. “Lunch rush is over, so I can be pulled away for a bit.”

“It’s Gabriel,” Dean sighed, motioning to the listless angel. “He woke up in the middle of the night screaming. I took him in to Ellen and Ash ad they suggested I bring him to you. They have no idea what’s wrong.”

Benny frowned. “Where does he hurt?”

“Around his wings. There’s some seriously nasty bruising where it hurts. If you want to see it, we’ll have to take his shirt off.”

Benny glanced at the angel then the clock and nodded, patting the table. “Let’s go upstairs,” He decided. Dean stood up, putting the backpack on and picking Gabriel up as Benny lifted Castiel. By now, both had finished eating so there were no complaints. 

“Bart, I’m going upstairs for a bit. Think you can handle it here?” Benny asked as they walked through the kitchen. An angel with cardinal red wings wearing an apron turned and nodded.

“Rush is over, I should be good,” He replied, holding a pan. He moved to another part of the kitchen and that’s when Dean saw.

The dirty blonde angel only had one arm. On his single wrist, he wore a silver bracelet, the same one Elijah and Josiah wore. He, however, did not have the blue bracelet. His empty shirt sleeve had been removed and the resulting hole had been sewn securely shut. He seemed well-adapted to the lack of arm, moving deftly around the kitchen, not dropping a thing. Benny nodded and led Dean through to the stairs leading to the second floor. This time, they went into the first room, which appeared to be a clinic. 

“Put him on the exam table and take his shirt off,” He ordered. Dean did so as Benny put Castiel down and gave him a lollipop, which was accepted with the fledgling’s first smile since his flashback episode. Turning around, Benny sucked in a breath as he saw the ugly bruising all over Gabriel’s back and now his sides. The discoloration had continued spreading and from the back, Gabriel looked one huge bruise.

“We don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Dean murmured. “Ellen won’t prescribe pills cause he’s already taking some for the fever he’s had, and he’s so sensitive to touch that we can’t use anything topical. Heat packs help, but…”

“Hmm…” Benny hummed to himself, eyes widening as he watched a spasm ripple through Gabriel and the fledgling cried out again. The relief provided from the second half of an Ibuprofen Dean gave him before they entered the restaurant was wearing off, leaving Gabriel with his pain, yet again. “You said heat helps?”

“Yeah.”

Benny moved to quickly get a heat pack, using one of the fancy kind, where you snap a coin that releases some kind of chemical to cause the heat, and wrapped it in a hand towel before gently laying it between Gabriel’s wings, where Dean instructed.

“I’m gonna go get Adina. She’s not gotten out of bed yet and everyone else is downstairs.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?"

“Every Friday, I have everyone that feels up to it go downstairs to socialize and help out around the restaurant. It gives them a change of scenery that some, like Elijah and Josiah, don’t usually get since they don’t often leave.” Benny left to fetch Adina and Dean sat down near Gabriel, who was lying on the table, eyes closed.

“I don’t know what’s happenin’ to you, kiddo, but we’ll get it figured out,” Dean promised. Gabriel’s whiskey eyes slowly opened.

“Are you sure?” He asked softly, his voice rough from all the crying he’d done. “I been sick ‘n ‘en I’m hurtin’. I don’no wha’s wrong but I jus’ wan’ it’ta stop.”

“I know you do,” Dean whispered. “You shouldn’t be going through this, whatever it is.”

“In here,” Benny murmured, then appeared with Adina trailing after him. Her hair was in a low, messy ponytail and her speckled wings drooped, but perked up when she saw Castiel sucking on his lollipop. “I need you to tell me if you know what’s going on. Gabriel, do you mind if I pick up the heat pack?”

“Go for it,” Gabriel groaned. Benny did so and Adina, stumbled back with a gasp, hands flying to her mouth and eyes wide.

“What?” Dean asked, dread filling him.

“Can- Can I go get Bart and Becca?”

“Go ahead, if you think they can help. Have Josiah take over for Bartholomew in the kitchen.” Benny replied as he replaced the heat pack. Adina left the room and came back minutes later with the two. Benny lifted the heat again and they had similar reactions as Adina. Bart’s eyes narrowed and motioned for Adina and Rebecca to follow him out the room, no explanation given to the humans or fledglings. Dean caught tiny snippets of their whispered discussions, including “six-wings”, “arch-”, and “make it?”.

Eventually, the three came back in. 

“I can help him,” Bart told Dean and Benny. “His pain will get worse before it gets better, but once it starts to get better, it will go away within a few hours. The bruising should be completely gone in about four days, maybe five.”

“How do you know?” Dean asked.

The one-armed angel fixed Dean with a baleful glare. “I just do. I  _ am _ an angel, just like him.”

“And what if I said no?”

“Then your fledgling would likely die. I am his best chance.”

“Wait,  _ seriously _ !? He’s  _ dying _ !?” Castiel jolted to his feet, eyes wide, and scrambled up the side of the table at those words.

“He will be,” Bart growled. “And now you just scared his brother.” 

“Okay, okay,” Dean muttered, raising his hands in surrender as Adina chirped at Castiel, causing the little one to stop then relax, presumably explaining the situation. Gabriel appeared to be listening as well and Adina continued her bird sounds. He reached to comob a hand through Castiel’s hair and the fledgling flinched before relaxing against the hand.

“What was that?” Rebecca asked.

“What?”

“His flinch. Why did he flinch?”

“You remember how he’s a farm angel?”

“Yeah?”

“The people- they’re not really people- would almost drown him whenever he made a sound so he’s selectively mute due to trauma. He’s been getting a lot better and had a really verbal day yesterday, but today he accidentally fell into the sink while he was washing his hands, had a flashback episode, and he hasn’t made a noise since.”

All three angels frowned at the story. Rebecca muttered something about “poor baby” and Bart stepped forward.

“Will you allow me to help the other now?”

“Oth- Oh. His name is Gabriel. And yeah, go ahead I guess.”

“Very well. Please be quiet.” The cardinal-winged angel dragged a stool with wheels over and sat on it. “Gabriel, I am going to move the heat pack then lay my hand on the back of your wings, right where the heat is laying. You will not feel anything but my hand. I will not be moving. Will you allow this?”

Gabriel frowned in indecision. Dean debated telling Bart that Gabriel didn’t let people touch his wings. 

“He doesn’t allow people to touch his wings,” Adina got to it first. “Trauma from the farm. They repeatedly stripped him and attempted-” Her voice changed to a low, whispery, harsh sounding chirp and Bart’s eyes widened. Rebecca made a noise of sick disbelief. Bartholomew then turned back to Gabriel with a series of low chirps. The fledgling nodded tiredly and a stream of soft, soothing whistles emitted from Bart’s mouth as the heat pack was carefully removed. As Bart gently lowered his hand against Gabriel’s wings, the fledgling tensed and let out a cry, causing Bart’s whistling to grow louder. Abruptly, Gabriel’s protests stopped and he fell still and limp on the table. Dean nearly moved to intervene, but Rebecca stopped him with a wing and a warning glance.

It took ten minutes of tense silence before Bart withdrew from Gabriel. “He is sleeping now,” He murmured. “He shouldn’t wake before an hour passes, but he may.” He then looked up at Dean. “Remember, he will get worse before he gets better. Are you prepared for that?”

“I will be,” Dean answered firmly. “I’m taking care of them and I’m not giving them up.”

Bart nodded and stepped back after giving Gabriel’s head a soft pat. He exchanged a glance with Rebecca while Adina peeped softly at Castiel, then announced that he was going back downstairs. He left abruptly, a single vibrant red feather fluttering to the ground. Rebecca frowned and picked it up, stashing it away.

“You better get Gabriel back home,” Benny murmured, breaking the following silence. Dean nodded and moved to pick the fledgling up. Alarmingly, he flopped limply, his body putting up no resistance to the movement. Dean adjusted him then helped Castiel up. He thought the angel would stay, but he kept moving until he was on Dean’s shoulders. He likely got the idea from the day before and Dean was grateful- it gave him the chance to hold Gabriel much more securely, tucked up on one arm and secured by the other. 

Soon after they got back to the apartment, Gabriel began to wake up. Per usual, he fussed and cried, but it didn’t seem different. Not worse, like Bartholomew had said it would be. Not yet, at least. Luckily, though, for Gabriel, it was almost time for his next dosage and he took it uncomplainingly.

The rest of that day and the next went by repetitively- Gabriel would wake up, fuss and cry with each time getting worse and worse, Dean would heat up his rice sock and get him something to eat, then would give him his medicine at the next dosing time. Between Gabriel’s waking hours, Dean would play with Castiel and make sure he ate. He managed to get the fledgling to laugh just before he went to bed Saturday, which Dean thought was an accomplishment.

And then came Sunday.

It started fairly normal, albeit Gabriel’s worsening pain. His golden feathers were almost always poofed from the constant torment and it took the combined power of both the split pill of Ibuprofen and the rice sock heated more than Dean was really comfortable with (but Gabriel asked for hotter and he couldn’t say no, not right now) to soothe him enough to stop the tears.

The knock on his door came around 1, with Gabriel lying on the futon whimpering, the rice sock in the microwave, and the coffeemaker running. Dean answered it, hoping desperately that it wasn't APS, at least not for a few more minutes. 

It was APS.

“Hi,” He opened the door wider and stepped to the side, allowing Lady Bevell and her unknown companion to enter. As they did so, the microwave beeped. “If you could give me a second, you came at a really bad time. Just, uh… Go ahead and sit at the table?”

Lady Bevell’s eyes narrowed but her companion took her elbow and pulled her over to sit. Dean snatched the sock from the microwave and took it to Gabriel, where he set it against his t-shirt-clad back and wiped away tears. He went to the bathroom and grabbed another split pill and helped Gabriel take it then went to grab an applesauce pouch for both angels. As he did so, he saw Castiel on the counter, about to poke curiously at the coffeemaker.

“Hey, hey, no, that’ll hurt,” He scooped the angel from the countertop and carried him to the futon, applesauce in hand. “No counters.” He opened the squeezy pouches and handed them to the two with the request to stay on the futon please, then finally returned to the APS agents.

“Do either of you want coffee?” He asked. “Or do you mind me having some? It’s been a rough few nights.” The formality left a sour taste in Dean’s mouth. They wanted to take Gabriel and Castiel away.

“No, thank you,” Lady Bevell declined.

“I’d like some, if that’s okay,” Her companion, equally as British, replied. “Mick Davies, by the way. I assume you’re Dean Winchester?”

“Sure am,” Dean replied, pouring two cups of coffee. “How do you take it?”

“A bit of milk, if you have it?”

“Yeah,” Dean finished the coffee, handing a mug to Mick Davies and taking a seat across from them. At some point, he’d gotten two more chairs for the angels to use instead of sitting on the table, but of course they ignored them. “So, um, Gabriel’s not been doing so well recently and he has another dose of medicine in about an hour or so that will put him to sleep, but he’s in serious pain right now, so it’s best that we don’t bother him until that rice sock cools.”

“How long might that be?” Lady Bevell asked coolly. 

“I think around 20 minutes? Then I give him a thirty minute break from the heat, which he always hates, and the last bit of time that he’s awake, he gets more heat. It’s the best we can do for him. I took him to the vet, they have no clue what’s wrong.”

“Alright, well, we have a few questions for you then we’ll start the inspection, if that’s alright with you?” 

“Sounds good.”

Mr. Davies flipped open the folder he’d brought in and took out a sheet of paper and a pen from seemingly nowhere. “Why are you applying or requesting guardianship of these angels?” He read off.

“My brother is their current owner,” Dean answered. “He was in a car accident while I was babysitting them and he got hurt that he probably won’t be able to use his right arm again and apparently that breaks your regulations on farm angels-”

“So you’re taking them as a favor?” Bevell interrupted.

“Well, partly,” Dean admitted. “But it’s also because they’re victims of severe trauma and if they’re split up, they freak out. Along with that, they have a laundry list of phobias and the wrong thing can set them off into these flashback episodes. Castiel had one a few days ago, he fell into the sink while washing his hands. I got him out almost immediately, but the damage was already done and he’s still recovering from the episode. If they’re taken to the wrong person that doesn’t understand that they’re special needs, they could mistreat or traumatize them worse.”

“What kinds of phobias?” Mick asked as he wrote.

“Well, Gabriel won’t let anybody touch his wings due to being stripped and he’s got scarring to suggest they tried to remove them. Castiel is terrified of any body of water and is selectively mute due to, according to Gabriel, them nearly drowning him any time he made noise. They’re both terrified of women with long, dark hair and black men, but they are getting somewhat better about that. They also, from what I’ve been told, absolutely refuse to go into cages, but I’ve not tried to put them into a cage.”

“Castiel fears water? Is that why he had one of these… ‘Episodes’ when he fell into your sink?”

“Yeah. I must have forgotten to take the plug out of the drain because it was filling up. There couldn’t have been more than an inch of water, but it was still enough to mess him up.”

“Okay…” Davies scribbled onto the sheet then pulled out another. “And you said Gabriel was stripped and may have had an attempted removal?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright… I understand that can cause some damage. Do you know if he has difficulty moving or unfolding his wings?”

“Uh, yeah, actually. I’ve never seen them more than half unfolded and he doesn’t flap them around or move them like Castiel does when he’s excited.”

“If you were granted ownership, what would you consider for helping him to possibly fly?”

“Well, I know someone that rehabilitates angels, and he has a fairly good success rate and they’re all pretty happy with him, so I’d probably take them- both of them- to him and see how he can help.”

“What do you mean both of them?”

“Well, he does angel rehab and apparently, since most of them come to him with injuries, the ones that end up living in residence will have some sort of mental issues that he’ll help them through. Mostly depression, he said, because he specializes in wing injuries, but he offered to possibly try to help Castiel in the future with his selective mutism and water phobia, as well as Gabriel with both his phobia of someone touching his wings and helping him build up muscle in his wings, then teaching him how to fly, but I think he would have some of his permanent residents help there.”

“Permanent residents?”

Dammit, his mouth had run ahead of him. Hoping Benny wouldn’t kill him for accidentally selling him out, despite not giving them a name, he decided to explain. “He’s currently helping an angel that lost a wing, but he’s got a deaf angel that lives there and there’s a one-armed angel that may live there, but I’m not sure.”

Davies nodded, pursing his lips as he wrote more down. 

“Alright, moving on. Have you ever had an angel before?”

“No.”

“Any previous pets?”

“None, didn’t have any growing up.”

Mick finished writing and stowed his pen away. “Alright, the rest of these are for after our inspection. Do you mind?”

“No, go ahead. Do you want me to come with you?”

“You can stay out here,” Lady Bevell told him brusquely. Davies cast her a look that she firmly ignored as the two moved first to the bedroom, both holding papers. Dean moved to the futon with his coffee, taking a sip then setting it on the small table nearby. 

“How’s it go?” Gabriel groaned, wincing with a soft moan at the slight movement speaking caused.

“I don’t know,” Dean replied. “I’m not sure. I don’t think that Lady Bevell really likes me, and that may cause some problems. But don’t you worry about it, either of you, cause whatever happens, we’ll figure it out.”

Castiel leaned forward and tapped Dean’s knee for attention, putting his hands over his belly.”

“Are you hungry?” Castiel gave the hand sign for ‘iffy’. “Not really but you want something to eat?” Nod. “Alright, let’s go see what there is.” He lifted Castiel easily and settled him on his hip then took him to search through the cabinets for something to eat. Castiel eventually leaned forward to reach for something.

“Gabriel? Do you want an orange?” Dean called to the other fledgling as he grabbed on for Castiel, frowning at the lack of response. He stuck the orange- one of those tiny Cuties- and went to see that Gabriel was hunched over, fist jammed in his mouth as his face twisted in pain.

“Hey, hey, what’s the matter?” He asked, rushing over and easing the angel’s hand away from his mouth. “Don’t bite yourself, fangs are too sharp. Do you hurt?”

“Y-yeah,” Gabriel managed to croak out.

“Alright, let me get Castiel his orange then I’ll get you figured out, okay?” Dean was already unpeeling the fruit as he spoke, leaving the stringy white pieces on like Castiel liked, and sectioned it. The fledgling took a piece then crawled onto the futon with the bowl, scooting to a safe distance where he knew he wouldn’t be in the way and watched Dean and his brother.

Dean moved to sit on the futon and was extremely concerned. If Gabriel was hurting through the hot rice sock  _ and _ pain meds, how bad would he have been if he didn’t have any of that? Bart said he’d get worse before he got better but was there a chance he’d only get worse?

A soft moan snapped him from his thoughts and he immediately focused back on Gabriel, whose cheeks had started to turn red and splotchy- sure signs he was about to start crying. Dean combed a hand through Gabriel’s hair and took off the hot pack, lifting his shirt just slightly to look at the bruising. Just as he replaced the fabric, the two APS agents finished their inspection.

“Dean? We have a few more questions.”

“Just hold on a few seconds, okay?” Dean whispered. Gabriel nodded tentatively, causing more pained whimpers to escape his lips as Dean moved back to the table, where the APS agents were waiting for him.

“Well, first off, we noticed that you only have the bed and a futon,” Mick started. “What are your plans for sleeping arrangements?”

“Well, first night I had them, I left them to sleep in my bed while I was on the futon, but when I woke up, they were both on the futon and they’ve seemed to prefer the futon, but only if I’m there too. Apparently they like laying on top of people as they sleep? I’m not sure, just that they came up with it, so they must be happy with it.”

“Alright…” Mick wrote something down. “Next, angels tend to like hiding places-”

He was cut off by a scream from the futon. All three adults bolted from their seats to the source: Gabriel. The cry had been building in his throat and a particularly painful spasm wrenched it out. He was hunched over on himself, noisily sobbing in his agony. Dean hopped up and came back a few seconds later, pushing past Davies and Bevell to tear the sock off Gabriel’s back and replace it with a baggie of ice. The sudden and extreme change in temperature stole the breath from his lungs for a few seconds, bringing his wails to a stuttering halt. Seeing dark spots forming underneath the wing slits in Gabriel’s shirt, Dean made a decision.

“Gabe, I’m taking your shirt off, okay? We need to see what’s going on.

Unable to speak due to his choking sobs, Gabriel gave Dean a weak thumbs-up and the human moved to carefully pull the fabric off of the angel. Underneath was worse than it had ever been.

The bruises were an ugly dark purple and now wrapped all the way across his torso. Underneath, instead of angry red streaks, were angrier red, raised welts that were oozing blood.

Taken aback, all three humans shared a frightened look. What was this??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rice sock trick actually does work! When I was little, I would wake up crying because of pain in my legs (We still don’t know why). My mom would fill up a big sock, like a knee sock, with rice, tie a knot, and nuke it in the microwave. The heat is like just a normal heat pack, much cheaper too, and it’ll move around a bit around the shape, though that’s limited by the size of the sock. Flax seed does the same thing. I got a bear with a pouch in its belly that had flax seed at one point, the Brandon Bear from Relax with Flax, if anyone’s interested. 
> 
> So sorry it’s taken so long to get this chapter up! I put another work up and I’m gonna make it a thing that I put a chapter up for each book when I update now so all of my works get updated at the same time and I don’t end up with one (Didn’t Expect This, Moony’s Tale) that aren’t updated for ages. That being said, I don’t think I’m going to continue Flight of The Lost. Sorry, for anyone who was reading that. :\
> 
> This is OFFICIALLY my longest chapter at about 31 pages and 13,385 words! This breaks the previous record of 27 pages and 11,888 words, AKA Chapter 6- the hospital chapter.
> 
> Next fic to be updated is You're Kidding!
> 
> Anyone have a clue what’s happening to Gabriel? Everything that’s been wrong with him has been leading up to this moment! The sickness, the pain, the strange voice Dean has been hearing… Please put guesses in the comments! Comments fuel the fic!


	12. Chapter 12

Dean was the first to move and he bolted into action.

“Alright, I’m taking him in. You guys… I don’t know, I guess go home? This has to be over  _ now _ .”

“We understand,” Mick replied, taking Bevell’s elbow. “We’ll be in touch in a few days.” He then left, dragging the blonde woman with him, and Dean was left with his two angels. He grabbed two towels then carefully wrapped Gabriel’s back in one, the material immediately soaking up blood. The other he threw over his shoulder as he grabbed the backpack then carefully- oh, so carefully- picked Gabriel up. The motion did nothing to help and his desperate, agonized screams only got louder. Cradling the angel, he cast a worried look at Castiel, who was pulling his shoes on.

“I’ll be back in a second,” He promised and hurried Gabriel out to the car, leaving his apartment door open. He situated the wailing creature on the other towel, laying him on his stomach, and turned to get Castiel, surprised to find the younger angel struggling to push through the building door, clinging to the orange bowl. He then jogged over to the tiny creature, opening the door and scooping him up. 

“What are you doing? I told you I was coming back. The apartment needs to be closed and locked-” Dean stopped when Castiel held up the apartment key. “Did you already?” Nod. “How?”

He received a look that was full of exasperation and  _ not the time _ as he plopped the dark-winged angel in next to his squalling brother. He then hopped in his side and  _ floored _ it out of the parking lot, going just barely within legal limits of the road. As he did so, he was on his phone, calling two numbers.

“ _ Critter Care Veterinary, how may we help you _ ?”

“Do you take emergency walk-ins?”

“ _ Yes, we do. How far away might you be, just so we have a rough estimate? _ ”

“Somewhere between five and ten minutes. It’s for an angel.”

“ _ Alright, we’ll be ready for you. _ ”

“Thanks.” Dean hung up then dialed a new number. 

“ _ Benny’s Dining, how may we help you _ ?”

“Joseph, right? I need you to tell Benny to send Bartholomew to Ellen’s. Something’s wrong with Gabriel and e seems to know what’s going on, he might be able to help. Got that?”

“ _ Uh- Y-yes, who is this? _ ”

“Dean Winchester. Benny and Bartholomew know who I am.”

“ _ Oh! Dean, yes, I know who you are… Mr. Benny! _ ” Joseph’s voice trailed off for a second, then came back to the phone. “ _ I’m going to hang up now, I’ll make sure your message gets passed on. _ ”

“Thanks,” Dean tossed his phone down on the seat and continued driving.

Over at Benny’s, Joseph was passing the frantically-delivered message on. Thankfully, they’d been caught in a lull in business and other workers were filling orders so the man could step away for a bit. Coming to a decision, he nodded. 

“Bart, go fly over to Ellen’s,” He ordered. “Don’t forget to grab a blue bracelet so you don’t get tagged for not having a collar. See what’s wrong with Gabriel and help him. I don’t know what you did, but this is probably the ‘worse’ you’d mentioned earlier. And you didn’t explain. So, go. We have it covered here.”

Bartholomew nodded and removed his apron, going to his room upstairs briefly to grab the blue metal band he wore outside of the restaurant and to change into clothes better suited for flying before exiting the building out the back door. 

Getting a running start, his cardinal wings spread to an impressive length, taking only one mighty beat to get the angel airborne. He gained altitude quickly and soared in the direction of Ellen’s office, wind whistling through his ears. By wing, it was much faster than car or foot and he got there fairly quickly, elegantly swooping down and landing just as the door closed behind someone. As he moved to enter the building, his gaze was caught by the one other being in the parking lot- the black-haired fledgling by the name of Castiel. He was trying to open the door, having arrived too late to catch it from whoever had entered before him- probably Dean, who had likely accidentally abandoned the second, pain-free angel in the parking lot. Bartholomew leaned down and scooped him up, using a wing to assist. He crossed his single arm over the fledgling’s back in the carry used by angels for their young and only instinct- muted, weak ones at that- caused Castiel to reach and grab the notches at the bottom of the older angel’s neck. Ensured that the fledgling wouldn’t fall- there was only so secure he could hold him, with only half of the crossed-arm carry- Bart pulled the door open.

“I’m looking for Dean Winchester and a fledgling named Gabriel,” He told the receptionist. “Gabriel would have been screaming and crying.”

“They’re in the room already, let me see if you’re welcome,” The receptionist slid off her stool and disappeared. Bart really wanted to flare his wings and threaten his way to the back, but knew that was the best way to get a tranquilizer dart  _ right _ where it would hurt and that was not what anybody needed. So instead, he waited impatiently with a traumatized baby shaking in his grasp. “You can come back,” 

Bart was led to a room and entered, the sounds of screams surrounding him. Gabriel’s cries were ear-piercing already and Bart knew that this likely would not be the end.

“What the hell did you do to him!?” Dean demanded as the cardinal-winged angel came in. He was sitting next to Gabriel, a hand against the baby’s pain-sweaty head.

“Maybe don’t abandon your fledglings in a parking lot, then you can ask me questions,” Bart growled in reply. “And didn’t you say that you would be prepared for this?”

“It’s not like you explained what ‘this’ would be!” Dean protested. “No matter what, I’m not giving them up, but a bit of warning would be nice!”

“Not the time!” Ellen, who was apparently leading this little emergency interrupted. “Bartholomew, can you help or not?”

“I can,” Bart grabbed a stool and wheeled it to be right in front of Gabriel, then sat down on it. He pressed his hand to the fledgling’s head, shoving Dean’s away, and moved Gabriel’s face to look directly in his eyes. Soon, Gabriel’s screams died to whimpers, but it wouldn’t last. 

“He won’t be like this for very long and when he comes back, it’s going to be bad,” Bart warned grimly as he nudged Ellen out of the way and wiped away blood. He leaned to mutter softly in Gabriel’s ear as he did so, his voice reaching frequencies that the humans in the room couldn’t hear. 

“Come here and see what is causing this pain,” Bart beckoned Dean forward, wiping away more welling blood. He wasn’t rough with this motion. No, he was careful, extraordinarily gentle. There was no need in causing more discomfort, not when the worst wasn’t over.

Dean couldn’t see what Bart was talking about. The welts along Gabriel’s back were still red and raised, looking so very painful. What only complicated matters was that Gabriel’s wings were only half-raised up from the mess, the edges of his golden feathers brushing the bloody mess and clumping together.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean shook his head, mystified. “All I can see is that he’s bleeding. He’s a giant bruise and he’s bleeding and miserable.”

“Hmm,” Bart muttered. “Well, you may want to cover your ears. The worst is about to come.” He carefully rested a claw against the top of one of the welts on Gabriel’s back and, in a single swift motion, plunged the sharp point against it, piercing Gabriel’s skin, causing yet more blood to well up, and the fledgling’s wails grew to volumes and frequencies that were putting the humans on the floor, grimacing, hands clapped over their ears. Despite this, Bart worked with a cold efficiency, cutting into Gabriel’s skin, cutting away the welts and scooping away stretched, now unneeded skin and revealing what was underneath. Once he finished, he wiped away blood and gently eased the masses from Gabriel’s back, carefully wiping them clean of the blood and goo coating them. At some point during this process, Gabriel’s screams had died to sobbing wails, quieted enough that he no longer posed a threat to Dean and Ellen’s eardrums, and now the humans were standing up and  _ boy _ did Dean look  _ pissed _ . Seeing the small pile of cut-away skin, his anger only drew.

“What the  _ hell _ did you do to him!?” He demanded, taking hold of Bart’s shoulder- the one with an arm- and spun the angel away from the fledgling.

“I helped him,” Bart replied calmly, coldly. “Unless you would have preferred he do this without help, which could have led to an ingrow, which would have caused an indescribable amount of pain, even worse than this?”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you would quit manhandling me-” Bart wrenched himself from Dean’s grip and retook his place by Gabriel, carefully moving his wings out of the way and taking a second to wipe away grime from the golden feathers. It was somewhat difficult, considering that Bart only had one arm to do this with and Dean ended up helping, holding the wing up and ignoring Gabriel’s phobia. Considering the fact that the fledgling was barely aware through his pain, he wasn’t reacting.

“Now look,” Bart breathed as he wiped more blood away then set the soaked rag aside and gestured to where the welts had been and Dean gasped.

“Are those-?”

“Yes. They are.”

‘Those’ were four tiny, naked, quivering masses folded tightly against Gabriel’s back. Bart gently unfolded one and it unbent at the single joint about halfway through the limb.

“I’ve never heard of this before,” Ellen murmured. Gabriel’s wails had long died away and he lay limply, soft whimpers escaping his lips though tears still slipped down his cheeks. “Why is he hardly bleeding? He’s been such a mess.”

“That skin was already dying,” Bart explained. “His body had already started diverting the blood away from the area and into the new wings, it just took time for it to happen. He was supposed to bleed from this, but the bleeding should completely stop soon.”

“So what did you do to him?” Dean asked. “That kept him from dying? On Friday?”

“I basically accelerated the movement of the new wings,” Bart explained. “It’s hard to really tell what happened, but with these, it can be fatal. Not usually in the wild, but more so with the way you humans have domesticated us. At the sign of such illness, many will just euthanize the fledgling instead of waiting it out,” Bart’s voice grew quite bitter when he mentioned the angels’ domestication at the hands of humans. “Even if that doesn’t happen, the fever won’t hit its peak unless an angel comes into linking contact with the fledgling. I’ve been told he had at least two links the day before he would have spiked, so that’s helpful. If he hadn’t have had those, his fever would have just kept rising until he died from being so sick. Believe it or not, that’s among the most common causes for arch- for these angels’ death. After that, though, there has to be another, specific type of link made for the wings to move to sprout and it has to be within a certain timeframe, or else the wings will wither inside, die, and the fledgling will turn septic, as humans call it. Then it will die. You were lucky I knew what to do, he was days away from starting the withering.” Bart straightened up, smoothing the naked, stumpy wings down then allowing the feathery set to return to its rightful place. “He’ll be fine now. His illness and bruising should clear up in a few days. He will be hungrier, though, when his appetite returns. This costs a lot of energy.”

“Are those really wings?”

“Of course they are.”

“When… When will they get feathers? Will he be able to fly with them?”

“If you’re asking about the trauma to his older set, I don’t know. I don’t know what the farmers did to him, how horribly damaged his muscles may be, if they cut into the ones that control the new sets. That all just depends and we’ll only be able to find out on his own discretion. I’m not going to try to figure that out while he’s nearly unconscious from the pain of sprouting for wings. It’s exhausting to do that. He should be sprouting his first downy feathers soon, around when the sickness begins to clear. By the end of the third week, he should have all his down and maybe a few pre-flight feathers.”

Dean nodded and smoothed hair away from Gabriel’s face. Exhausted, the fledgling leaned his head into the hand, blinking his whiskey eyes open to stare up at Dean.

“C’s… Cas…” He whispered, voice breaking from painful overuse. The dark fledgling, at the sound of his name, swiftly climbed up to join his brother, fingers jammed in his mouth. He removed them to chirp and whistle, leaning his forehead against Gabriel’s and his noises lowered in volume until he was shaking, tears budding in his eyes. Dean figured that, in their birdy, angelic language, Castiel was saying something along the lines of how worried he was, how scared. Tiredly, Gabriel managed to press his cheek against Castiel’s before, head swimming, he had to lay completely back down. Castiel concernedly chirped at him and the whiskey eyes closed and, in mere seconds, Gabriel’s breathing evened out as he slept.

About an hour later, Dean and Bartholomew were walking out, each carrying a fledgling. 

“Why are you holding Castiel like that?” Dean asked as he gently laid Gabriel on the Impala seat.

“It’s how we hold our young,” Bart replied. He seemed much more patient with Dean now that Gabriel wasn’t screaming and sprouting any new wings. “It’s best for carrying them while flying. We cross our arms over them- I obviously can’t do that effectively- and they grab onto small bone notches on the backs of our necks.” After setting Castiel in with his brother, Bart turned and shifted his shirt to show Dean the notches. “Gabriel and Castiel’s won’t be very obvious, but as they grow up, they’ll be more noticeable. It’s not like they’re exactly carrying any babies, they’re only fledglings themselves.”

“So, what, it’s part of angelic puberty?”

Bart considered it. “It’s one of our measures of an angel reaching maturity. The notches finish forming about the same time we finish growing flight feathers.”

“Is it painful” Dean asked, frowning. He didn’t want Gabriel to have to deal with more painful body parts growing.

“No, just uncomfortable. Like an unbearable itch you can’t scratch, but the feeling goes away after they finish growing.”

Before long, Bart was flying away, back home, and Dean watched as he quickly became a dark red speck against the sky.

After they returned, Gabriel was set on the futon, Castiel disappeared somewhere, and Dean sat next to the sleeping fledgling with a Google search on his laptop-  _ Six-winged angels _ . Naturally, the first result was from AngeliCo, and he clicked on the article.

_ Six-winged angels are extraordinarily rare. The process of growing extra wings is extremely painful and life-threatening. These angels are referred to as ‘archangels’ by their two-winged counterparts. _

_ Because of their scarcity, research on archangels is quite limited. However, the few studies done have found that archangels are fiercely protective and territorial. They often form family groups, called ‘flocks’ or ‘garrisons’ and appear to take the role as leader or matriarch/patriarch. It appears that archangels tend to be male, but there are female archangels as well. This ties in with the rumored ‘angelic hierarchy’, of which there is nearly nothing known about. _

_ Archangels are different from angels in more than just wings. They appear to be able to perform stronger mind-links and there is the possibility of telepathy and a boosted healing factor that they can extend to other angels and possibly humans. _

_ Suspicious that your fledgling may be an archangel? First, check their age. The four new wings begin growth no later than 20 months old, so if your fledgling is older than that, it is unlikely that it is an archangel. Second, check their wing size. If the wings it was born with are disproportionately large, it is possible that they are that way so the new wings will fit underneath. Third, check if they have fallen ill. The illness preceding the growth of the new wings will be characterized by a bad fever, cough, and eventual loss of voice. During this sickness, you may begin to hear a voice in your head. Finally, if this illness has occurred, you may notice the fledgling in an extreme amount of pain. This will be the growth of the wings. The site where the new wings will sprout will start with red streaks below the existing wings. Bruising will form and will eventually encompass the angel’s entire back and some of its front. Eventually, welts will grow and the angel will begin screaming from its pain. This is because the new pairs of wings are preparing to split through its skin. _

_ There is evidence to suggest that adult angels are somehow involved with this process, but it is inconclusive due to the rarity of archangels both in captivity and the wild. Mortality rates appear to be lower in the presence of an adult angel, but it is unclear as to why this is. It is also unknown what causes archangels to be born. Evidence suggests genetic, circumstantial, and environmental causes. _

“Okay then,” Dean murmured, glancing down at Gabriel, who was fast asleep. “You could have died, really easily.” The angel-  _ archangel _ \- mumbled softly and turned his head, all six wings twitching slightly.

Seeing the movement caused Dean to wonder- had the attempted removal on Gabriel’s first set of wings affected his new ones? The article mentioned a healing factor, would this heal the damage done? Pursing his lips, he typed a new search into his search bar after bookmarking this article- He would want to show Sam later.

_ Effects of stripping angel wings _

Shockingly, the first result was not from AngeliCo- it was an article from some news channel.

**_Study Reveals New Damage Caused By Angel Stripping and Removal_ **

_ By Ashley Frank _

_ Apr. 2, 2014 _

_ A recent study conducted in a partnership with Harvard University and leading angel company AngeliCo revealed new, previously unknown, extensive damage from stripping angels.  _

_ Stripping, or the process of systematically removing every feather from an angel’s wings, is a widely used practice in angel farms.  _

_ Mutilation of the wings is not an uncommon practice. Plucking, a widely-used method of discipline, involves the removal of only one or two feathers, typically flight feathers or feathers near the base of the wings. Clipping, the common practice of preventing an angel from flying, involves trimming an angel’s primary feathers and makes the angel incapable of flight until it molts. However, while plucking and clipping do not have permanent effects unless done incorrectly, stripping can leave permanent damage.  _

_ Previously known effects of stripping include thinner, patchier regrowth of feathers, dry skin, and limited flight abilities until feathers are regrown. However, much more dangerous results of stripping have been discovered. _

_ “Stripping has always been a practice we recommend against,” Charles Shurley, CEO of AngeliCo and angel rights advocate, told The Daily Review. “We already knew that the complete removal of any feathered creature’s feathers was a bad idea. It’s their insulation. It’s like shaving a husky in the arctic.” _

_ One of the found effects was extensive muscle damage, causing more difficulties with flight and wing movement. _

_ “The problem with stripping,” Shurley stated, “Is that, especially in farms, it is often paired with an attempted and failed removal. It’s extremely difficult to remove a live angel’s wings and when a farmer tries and fails to remove the wings, the feathers will usually be a mess and, instead of trying to clean them, they’ll just be torn out. The attempted removal will usually leave the angel with extensive muscle damage that can cause it to be unable to fly or even unfold its wings all the way. Depending on how bad the damage is and when it occurs, there are some angels that will never experience flight.” _

_ Evidence from the study has revealed that the younger an angel is when the stripping and possible attempted removal occurs, the worse the damage will be.  _

_ “Because fledglings are so much smaller, any damage done to their muscles is much worse than the same degree done to an adult,” states angel anatomy expert, Dr. Ed Mason. “They’re much more delicate and, up to a certain age, even a small injury can cause life-impacting complications. After this age threshold has passed, the fledgling will heal faster than adults due to their development, similar to how human children will heal faster than human adults. Before this threshold, however, they’ll heal, but have a high chance of healing incorrectly or incompletely. This is where the attempted removal can leave them with problems. Any attempted removal can damage an angel significantly, but damage done after the age threshold can usually be repaired with surgery. Done before the threshold, however, it’s a completely different story. The fledglings are so little and the angelic healing factor is so different that we don’t currently have the technology to repair the damage done. By the time the angel is big enough for surgery to be effective, the damage has already repaired itself and trying to open it back up, think the ‘break, heal incorrectly, rebreak and reset’ method when it comes to human bones, that just can’t be done on angels, not muscle damage that happened at an early age. And because their muscles are so tiny and undeveloped, trying to remove their wings can cut straight through muscles necessary for flight. In adults, these muscle groups are bigger and harder to cut through.” _

_ Beside the lasting physical effects- impeded flight, difficulty regrowing feathers, and irreparable muscle damage- there are also behavioral effects.  _

_ “I own an angel whose wings were nearly removed in a farm,” Charlie Bradbury, Professor of Angel Behavior and the head of the study spoke on the behavioral effects and the reason she started the study. “He has difficulty flying and recently, I noticed he was exhibiting anxious and depressed behaviors. He suffered the near-removal when he was quite young, just under a year, and he has weakness in his wings that only lets him fly for maybe ten minutes at a time. After interacting with a variety of angels, including farm angels who suffered the failed removals, farm angels who didn’t, normal shelter angels, and shelter angels with damaged wings, I noticed that many of the angels with damaged wings were exhibiting the same depressed behavior if their flight was impeded. The study was originally supposed to only examine the behavioral effects of damage on wings, but in researching, we narrowed it down to ‘what does removal do to angels’. This isn’t just failed removals, either. We also investigated full removals and damage to wings for various reasons. The most common thread between these types of damage was that every angel whose ability to fly was either impeded or taken away exhibited depressed or anxious behavior. It’s from a lack of mobility and stimulation. Think of when you break a leg. You’re put on bedrest, right? And eventually you go stir-crazy before getting the cast off and moving around again? It’s like that but for the angel’s entire life, so it’s no wonder they’re behaving differently. It’s stressful for them and they don’t handle emotional stress very well. It’ll then take a physical toll on them, leading them to pick at their own feathers and hair, they’ll eat less, they’ll play less, they’ll either sleep more or sleep less but get really lethargic. It’s overall, not a good situation.” _

_ Shurley, Mason, and Bradbury all agree that removal of the wings and stripping is extremely bad for angels.  _

_ “It constitutes abuse, plain and simple,” Shurley declared. “I know there isn’t like, any documentation on what counts as angel abuse, but stripping and removing definitely counts. Farms are, without a doubt, extremely abusive and I know I’ve said this before but I’ll repeat myself- any animal farm, whether it’s an angel farm or a kitten or puppy mill, they need to be completely eradicated. They’re abusive, the conditions are awful, it’s nothing any living creature should live in. I’ve visited multiple farms after raids have cleared out the angels and it’s disgusting, seeing what they’ve gone through. It’s horrible to imagine that humans have put any living creature though something like that.” _

_ To read more about angel farms and see pictures of the aftermath, follow this  _ _ link _ _. _

Dean clicked on the link and, after checking that Gabriel was still asleep, bypassed the 'this image could be potentially disturbing' shield, opened up the first farm picture and promptly turned away, fist pressed over his mouth. 

"Holy shit," He whispered as looked at the picture again. Thankfully, there were no angels in it, but there were empty cages, with disintegrating newspapers lining the hard wire, feces and waste piled up inside and out of the cages. He thought he saw blood and- was that a chunk of a wing hanging from a broken wire?

Dean had to close out the page and pushed his laptop to the side, leaning to press his hands against his forehead, elbows on his knees. 

"Good God," He whispered hoarsely. Just then, Gabriel woke up with a groan.

“How do you feel?” He asked softly, squishing his queasiness from the picture. Gabriel lifted his head and rolled his shoulders. 

“My back feels funky.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Obviously not,” Gabriel fixed Dean with a dark look. “I’ve only been hurting for ages and now I’m all of a sudden not.”

“You grew wings. Four new wings.” Gabriel frowned. 

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. You’ve got two more sets of wings. Want to see a picture?”

“Sure,” Gabriel lay still as Dean quickly took a picture then showed him. “They look funny.”

“Bartholomew said that you should have feathers growing in in just a few days,” Dean told him and Gabriel frowned. “What?”

“When I was getting my feathers back after- After Jody rescued us, it itched really bad. I think, I don’t really remember that well.”

Dean helped Gabriel to sit up and the fledgling gave his new wings a few experimental twitches, wincing at the leftover soreness in his muscles. 

Suddenly Castiel, who had made himself scarce since their return, crawled up onto the futon. “How y’feel?” He asked softly with a careful glance at Dean. “Still hurt?”

“No, ‘m okay,” Gabriel reached for Castiel’s hand, which the fledgling handed over willingly. Gabriel linked their fingers together and bounced their hands once. “ ‘m hungry.”

“Let me go grab something,” Dean rolled off the futon, returning a few minutes later. True to Bart’s prediction, the angel ate ravenously, showing more enthusiasm for food than he had the entire week.

Throughout the next days before feathers began to grow into Gabriel’s new wings, the stumpy limbs quickly grew. They were soon covered in light gold fuzz, and Gabriel spent the next days rolling around, whining at the itchiness. Of course, he refused to let anyone touch them, so he was on his own. Often, he’d be found squirming with his wings pressed against the carpeting, which he claimed to be the only thing that would help. He also ate so much more than he previously had and his fever and cough cleared up quickly, along with the bruising. Soon, he was a whole new angel.

Unfortunately, this meant he got into so many more things that before, and he often dragged Castiel into his mischief. With his fever cleared up, Dean felt comfortable enough to leave them to go to the store and it was after one of these quick trips that he came back to discover the most recent shenanigans.

The apartment was quiet when he got back, which wasn’t unusual. Dean set the groceries down so he could take his shoes off, and then he heard it.  _ Giggling _ .

“Bean! Bean!” Castiel cried. Dean followed the summons and froze to find both angels in the kitchen, an empty glass bottle lying between them. Gabriel was giggling and hiccuping while Castiel was unsteadily attempting to stand up and continuously falling. 

“What the hell?” Dean leaned forward and picked up the bottle, his heart falling when he read the label. It was the single bottle of alcohol left in his apartment- a bottle of Jack Daniels he’d kept on top of the fridge. It hardly had anything left in it, but he supposed that it was enough to get two tiny fledglings drunk, and it seemed that, based on the flush of their skin and how unsteady they were, they were  _ very _ drunk. “Good God,”

“Bean!” There was suddenly a weight against Dean’s leg and he looked down to see that Castiel had managed to stay on his feet long enough to make it over to Dean, but had fallen again and was using the man for balance. “I feel funny! I'z all swimmy!”

The fledgling was all broad grins and giggles, the most positivity he’d shown. He was also extremely chatty, as he kept babbling on about how he felt ‘swimmy’. Dean was about to lean down and pick the swaying creatures when he froze.

“Uh oh,” He muttered, seconds before his sides heaved and he puked all over the floor and himself. Then it didn’t seem to stop.

“Aw, crap,” Dean picked the still-puking angel up and held him over the sink, ignoring just how nasty this was.

“Bean?” Gabriel looked up at Dean, confusion written over his little face. “Feel funky-” Gabriel gagged but nothing came up. Yet. Dean left Castiel to heave into the sink and hurried to grab the bathroom garbage can, which he’d emptied that warning, and stuffed it up against Gabriel. Apparently, he’d hit him just wrong and the angel had barely a second before he released his stomach into the can.

“Dammit,” Dean muttered. “Okay, you stay there, I don’t want Castiel falling into the sink.” Gabriel didn’t seem to hear him, head down in the small bucket. Dean went to support Castiel, who had finally finished throwing up. “Feeling better?”

The fledgling lifted his head dizzily and Dean had mere seconds of warning before he had to physically point Castiel back at the sink to prevent more mess. 

“Guess not,”

“Bean!” Gabriel had managed to drag himself from the floor and stumble to Dean, falling against his leg much like Castiel had. Sweat clung his hair to his face and he was still intoxicated- This much became very obvious with his next, horribly slurred words. “They tried t’ cu’ off m’  _ wings _ .” His whiskey eyes- how ironic right now- were wide and hazy. “They had th’ big knives ‘n they pulled out all m’ feathers ‘n they jus’ star’ed  _ cuttin’  _ ‘n  _ cuttin’  _ ‘n they weren’ gon’ stop I don’ think but then  _ A’s’tair _ came ’n ‘e  _ stopped  _ ‘em. Why’d ‘e stop ‘em?” Gabriel looked away with a confused frown. “I dunno why ‘e stopped them cause ‘e just twisted ‘em and twisted ‘ntil I thought they’d break and Bean it  _ hurt _ . It hur’ so  _ much _ .” His gaze returned to Dean. “Why’d they do it, Bean? I di’n’t do a thing to ‘em, they shou’n’t’a done it.” The fledgling was doing a complete 180 as he let go of Dean’s leg and stumbled away, eyes filling with tears as he repeated “Why’d they do it, I di’n’t d’serve it,” Over and over again. Dean looked at Castiel, who was now dry-heaving and moaning, and inched him away from the sink before going to the other, very volatile fledgling.

“I don’t know why they tried to remove your wings,” He murmured, shocked that Gabriel had said anything about the farm. “They were bad people, that’s all I can say.”

“Well they shou’n’t’a!” Gabriel was suddenly yelling and flailing, his multiple sets of wings hitting the floor and Dean. “C’se ‘m not jus’ a ‘ _ creat’re _ I’m ‘live too ‘n I feel too! You b’lieve me, ri’? That I ain’t d’serve it?”

"Of course you didn't deserve it," Dean murmured, crouching down in front of the archangel, who was stumbling across the kitchen floor in his ranting stupor 

"Then why they  _ do  _ it!?" Gabriel grabbed Dean's pants leg and shook it a bit, tears welling in his eyes. "Why they drown'ed Cassie 'n why they hur' me so ba'? I can' ev'n move m' wings ri' 'n I  _ never  _ been able to cuz they on'y took us ou' t' hur' us 'n I don' ge'it!" The young fledgling was, by now, very difficult to understand through his slurring and crying. Dean didn't have anything to say, merely pulling the archangel close. 

Gabriel's sides heaved just seconds before he threw up over Dean's shoulder and dissolved into sobs. "'m s-sorry!" 

"It's okay, you're okay," Dean soothed, rubbing his back below the fuzzy wings and ignoring the disgust rising in him. He'd take a long, thorough shower later. “Alright, let’s get you some water,” He murmured. “You’ll feel better after a drink.”

“No don’ mo-” Gabriel’s protest was cut off and Dean’s face screwed up as yet more mess was made. Thankfully, his shirt was long enough. He couldn’t imagine-  _ Ugh _ .

Dean stood up and whisked Gabriel over to the sink, positioning him just in time for the motion to upset the archangel’s stomach even more. By now, though, there was nothing left in his stomach but bile and even then, Gabriel was more just dry heaving than anything else. With a sigh, Dean set the miserable fledgling on the other side of the sink, opposite to Castiel, who was lying with his cheek pressed against the cool metal of the sink, eyes closed. Dean turned on the faucet and sent vomit swirling down the drain, cleaning out the stainless steel sink before grabbing two plastic cups and filling them.

“Alright, sit up,” He murmured before pressing the cup against Gabriel’s lips and helping the angel drink. He only managed a few swallows before he turned away. Dean decided not to force the matter and set the cup down, doing the same for Castiel, who wouldn’t even let Dean put the cup near his mouth. “Come on, Cas, you need water or else you’ll get dehydrated.”

“No-” Dean took the advantage and got a bit of water into Castiel’s mouth, causing the little angel to splutter and spit it up. With a wave of disappointment, Dean realized that he’d probably not swallowed any of it. With an unexpected scream as Dean tried to hold Castiel’s head still, the cup was smacked from his hand and the fledgling curled in a ball, hands shielding his head, fingers laced through his hair.

“He don’ wan’ it,” Gabriel spoke up from his spot on the counter and Dean rolled his eyes.

“No shit, Sherlock, I hadn’t figured that out,” He snapped and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the intoxicated fledgling flinch. “Aw, dammit,” He laid Castiel back down and went back over to Gabriel. “I didn’t meant it, I was just stressed. You guys aren’t supposed to have this stuff, you’re drunk.”

“No ‘m not!” Gabriel argued, trying to stand on the counter. Off-balance, though, he stumbled and would have fallen off if Dean hadn’t caught him. “Tha’ means nothin’.”

“Sure. You two collectively finished my bottle of Jack and you’re totally not drunk. Besides the fact that you’re tiny and skinny, you didn’t have anything to eat beforehand  _ and _ you probably have like, no tolerance. But you’re totally not drunk. You can’t even stand up straight.”

“‘M totally fine.”

“Sure. I mean, you’ve sobered up some but still, you’re pretty messed up.”

“Dean ‘m cold,” Castiel suddenly spoke up and the adult turned to see the fledgling sitting up, arms and wings wrapped around himself as he shuddered.

“Shit, alright,” Dean muttered. “Okay, you both are absolute messes. It’s disgusting. Cas, do you think you can handle a really quick, warm bath? It’ll feel good and I need to clean you two up.”

Gabriel sat up in Dean’s arms. “No!”

Castiel hunched over himself and shrugged. “I can try.”

“If you can’t, that’s okay. You can sit in the tub as it fills up and if it gets to be too much, we’ll stop, okay?”

“Kay.”

“Alright.” He picked the other angel up and carried the two to the bathroom. “I’m going to leave you two in the tub and go grab you- and me- new clothes, alright?”

Without waiting for a reply, he sat the two in the tub and hurried away to change his shirt and find clothes for them. When he returned, Gabriel and Castiel were leaning against each other, Castiel shivering Gabriel’s eyes sliding closed as his head drooped- he looked near sleep.

“Hey, wake up,” Dean nudged the young archangel awake. “Alright, I’ve got clothes and towels. Castiel, I’m gonna turn on the water, okay? I’m not going to stop the drain until it’s at a good temperature.”

Castiel nodded almost imperceptibly, flinching away as Dean turned on the faucet. After making sure the water wasn’t too hot, he blocked the drain, making sure that Castiel could see what he was doing. He could see the little angel fidget nervously as the water began to pool up but he stuck with it until it began to lap at his toes. With a terrified, nearly silent shriek, Castiel launched himself from the tub, scrambling up the side with help from Gabriel, and rocketing to the opposite side of the room where he froze, wings fluffed and eyes distant.

Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so! if you come from the other books and/or have seen the announcement on the most recently posted chapters, then you know that I'm changing my update system (yet again I know). I'm going to be focusing on writing Sam's Angels. After I finish it, I'll move on to some other fic that's in processing. This will (hopefully) get it finished quicker than splitting my focus on 6 different works, and updates will come in quicker too! 
> 
> Thoughts on that^?
> 
> So the big reveal, what has been wrong with Gabriel- new wings! Thoughts on Bart/Benny's whole operation? What do you think APS will do, especially when they hear of the new developments in this chapter?


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***WARNING***
> 
> This chapter deals in sensitive subjects like SEXUAL ASSAULT and DRUG USE
> 
> If you may be triggered by these subjects, this is your WARNING
> 
> If you must avoid these subjects, this marker --> *** will be at the beginning of it. This warning lasts until the end of the italics. Recap in the end notes.

Gabriel scrambled out of the tub, stumbling from his lingering intoxication, and hurried to his brother’s side. The younger fledgling was already falling, beautiful blue eyes dimming. An idea struck Gabriel and he reached for Castiel, intending to turn his head and try something he’d never initiated, only received. 

“No, Gabriel, back off,” Dean muttered, stepping in and carefully picking Gabriel up. The tub was already draining and the water had long been turned off as the human set the gold archangel back inside. “He’ll be okay, we saw this just a few days ago, remember?”

Still inebriated and volatile, Gabriel’s mental state was already unsteady. A single, accidental brush against his largest, damaged wings and he was spiraling. _  
_

_ He was comfort. He was warm. He was safe. He was lost memories that only surfaced in the worst of times. _

_ In his egg, he was protected. He could hear her, her heartbeat, her purring chirps as she spoke to him. In his egg, he was six tiny, microscopic wings. He grew, a body forming around the divine limbs, the four smallest residing close to the small, developing skeleton to lay dormant, soon becoming covered by the skin that came into existence. _

_ Then, as his fingers were obtaining prints, everything changed. He could no longer hear her. She was still there, he could sense, but it was so hard to hear her. She was distant. However, enveloped in this protective bubble, the only thing he’d ever known, he could not find it in himself to be very distressed. There was no reason to fear anything- there was nothing to fear in this sweet, soft safety. _

_ He began to grow restless as the first baby feathers began to form under his skin. He was beginning to sense and shift and cool. His safe, protective barrier was weakening and he didn’t like it. It was growing bright and the bright disturbed him. _

_ He emerged soon later. He had grown curious and felt the need to scrape at the weakening barrier, to discover what lay beyond… Where she had gone, for he could no longer hear her. The first thing he knew as the barrier broke was cold and as the protective shell collapsed around him, he lay shivering and soggy, half inside the barrier, half on scratchy material that drew only feelings of dislike from the newborn fledgling. His shuddering caused him to curl, naked wings instinctively moving to shroud at his shoulders, tiny hands held in tight fists and twisted against his chest. _

_ Then he was moving, being moved, and he was leaving that barrier that had been his home. But he was warm again and only seconds passed before he could hear her again. An unfamiliar, unpleasant twisting was soon known to him and he opened his mouth to cry out, to bring her awareness of his discomfort, something he was unused to- And to open that small mouth, an action he’d never done before! _

_ And when he did, before he was able to understand how to pair his breath with his intention, something slipped into that little mouth of his and, accompanied by the lack of that nourishing fluid that had once surrounded him and the instinct that told him to  _ _ suck _ _ , he closed his mouth and obeyed. _

_ And oh, when he did! It was unfamiliar but so much better than the surrounding nourishment. It only took a short moment and a lack of coordination, but he managed to swallow his mouthful of the new nourishment and when he did, more came! He repeated the motion- pressure, suck, swallow- and the emptiness was filled once again by that sweetness he was quickly growing to enjoy. With a slight shift of his arms to uncurl and press forward, searching for the source of this nourishment- his first voluntary movement of major muscle groups- he leaned forward and began to greedily suckle, swallowing delicious, tiny mouthful after delicious, tiny mouthful. _

_ His focus completely on his delighted drinking, he was unaware that there were more noises for him to hear- more than just her. His soft, breathy snuffling paired with softer whistling mumbles. Farther, distant, louder whistles could be heard. Chirps. And, just on the edges of her inattentive ears, there were more fear-filled sounds, agitation beyond what he knew. _

_ This did not register in his young mind, as his own hearing was nowhere near developed enough to even register the louder whistles. Focused as he was, his entire world consisted only of that sweet food and his stomach.  _

_ Inevitably, as it was with his small size, he tired. Unknowing of the heaviness that would pair with fatigue, he was unaware of his creeping exhaustion and he fell asleep still sucking, only managing to swallow half of what was in his mouth, the remainders dribbling out as his muscles went lax and he fell, subdued, to the gentle grasp of sleep. _

_ When he became aware again, that twisting sensation had returned. This time, as he opened his mouth to cry out, nothing moved past his small lips, not at first. He was able to understand his voice and hear his first hungry peeps before he was once again being filled by the source of his nourishment. He drank even more greedily than the last time, small fists kneading against the cushy softness that existed just in front of him. He soon found that this seemed to assist in his drinking, especially when, an unknown amount of feeding later, he began to have to work harder to fill his mouth. With an unhappy whine he was unaware of making, he began sucking harder and harder, squealing entirely when, moments later, the source was removed from his mouth. But he wasn’t finished! He wanted to somehow say. He wanted more! _

_ His panic died away as, soon later and entirely unexpectedly, a new thing entered his mouth. He tried to struggle- this wasn’t right! He drank from that source and only that! But his struggles brought pressure and that pressure released into his mouth what he’d been drinking just moments before. He froze in surprise. This wasn't- _

_ Hesitantly, he began to suck again and his misgivings fell away as his stomach began to feel comfortably full and sleep began to steal at him once more. He was beginning to recognize the feeling and readily welcomed the comfort it brought.  _

_ For days, though he was unaware of time passing, this process repeated itself. He would wake up, eat, then fall back to sleep. His existence was soft, warm comfort and comfortably full bellies. He was this blind, nearly deaf thing and, not knowing any other way to be, was perfectly content. As he grew, however, things began to change. His hearing began to clear and grow more acute and he could hear her humming as he drank, rather than feeling the vibrations. He soon was able to hear the rustling after he woke, before he was lifted to eat.  _

_ Then the brightness, the very thing that had prompted him to edge out of the egg, began to grow brighter, more intrusive. He didn't like it but his eyes were unsealing and he did start to grow curious- what was out there? _

_ What did she look like? What did he look like? _

_ All of these thoughts ran through his head as he drank. With his split focus, he wasn't sucking as strong, something that was noticed by the new pressure against his head, gently pushing him closer to the source. He let his thoughts slide away as he returned his focus solely to eating, but they eventually returned when he was near finished. Then- why not? He could try.  _

_ After a few moments' attempting, the once-sealed eyelids fluttered open to reveal soulful blue eyes. He squinted as his eyes opened- it was bright, so bright. Something shifted to shield him from the light and he tried again.  _

_ This time, he was able to keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds, but only a little bit. Everything was blurry and he was unused to sight. He wasn't so sure that he liked it and his eyelids slipped closed as he let himself get lost in the sensation of food once again.  _

_ He didn’t believe that he would try to open his eyes again. He was perfectly happy without. He would continue his eat and sleep cycle and decided not to think any more about it. _

_ Of course, this failed, especially when he woke up next, shivering at the chill he was unaccustomed to. The familiar twist of hunger squirmed in his belly and he cried out for her, pushing myself up unsteadily, straining his ears for any sign of her. Nothing. _

_ Already breaking his promise to himself, he pried his eyes open. He could just barely make out blurry shapes and colors, but it stunned him. He had never seen anything besides blackness before and this new world was vibrant.  _

_ He half-slithered, half-crawled around, seemingly exploring his home but in reality, he was searching for her. And he could smell her, but he couldn’t see her. _

_ Where did she go? _

_ After some more time spent squirming around, searching for the war body he was used to, he found nothing. Eventually, he came to the one terrifying realization. _

_ She was gone. _

_ A plaintive, terrified wail ripped out of his throat at the realization. He was alone. He was hungry and scared and alone. She was gone she was gone shewasgoneandhewasalone alone alone. His panicked cries continued until, in his limited vision, something moved. Suddenly, he was being scooped up and, after a few seconds, he was being nudged to his food source. Without hesitation, he latched on and began to drink desperately, as though she would disappear. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut at the strength of his sucking. He felt a gentle pressure moving down his head and realized he was being pet but, too absorbed in his eating, he didn't care.  _

_ She chirped gently as she moved around, causing him to whine through his food until she settled down. She then began to whistle and chirp softly at him and the sound, as well as her steady heartbeat, soothed him so he didn't drink so desperately and his eyes eased back open until he was gazing up at her as he drank. She was shocked by the emotion in his soulful eyes, how he seemed to be saying "how could you leave me? I was so scared." _

_ She tucked him close and he stared at the blurry face of his mother until his eyes began to droop sleepily and his suckling slowed until he wasn't anymore and his mouth fell slightly open. For the first time, he didn't fall asleep as he ate, but it was close- only a few moments between when he stopped and when his eyes closed. His soft, sleeping breaths came in little huffs and she cradled him lovingly and gently brushed a hand down his soft, thin baby hair.  _

_ He grew quickly and she didn't disappear again. His hair darkened from the light cornsilk blond to a lovely sunshine-gold. His eyes began to change from baby blue to amber as his vision sharpened and his nails just barely began to slowly grow. He was able to stay awake longer and longer after eating, gazing up at her without a sound, only vocalizing accidentally as he ate or slept, or when she didn't feed him fast enough and he grew impatient. A pain began to grow in his mouth and, as he first began to feel it, he began to whine and complain, mouth open slightly. She allowed him to gnaw on her finger as she held him in her lap while she preened her own wings and straightened his own patchy, fluffy down that was still growing in. Bunched up on his back, he held onto her wrist with his hands and his feet eventually lifted to rest against her forearm, pushing occasionally as he gummed her finger. She had been careful to dull her claw before she ever let him start to chew on her so he wouldn't get hurt.  _

_ As she ran the sharp tips of her other claws through the downy feathers of his wings, he pushed at her finger and reached up with a soft sound. She took her hand back and lifted the little one, smiling gently as he began to drink with soft snuffling sounds, his turning amber eyes meeting her own of the pure brown-gold. He could see her face clearly now and though he couldn't recognize faces, her warm, milky scent would stay forever in his nose.  _

_ This was his first time feeding twice in one waking stretch and it grew obvious that he was still so little and young when, only a few minutes into the feeding, his eyes began to droop and his suckling slowed. For the first time in a while, he fell asleep with some of his mother's milk still in his mouth and she wiped it away as it dribbled down his cheek.  _

_ She sighed tiredly as she laid down, still holding him close. He was beginning to sleep less which, for his mother, was tiring. She'd never had a child before, he was her first, and she was tired. His conception had been unpleasant and his laying uncomfortable. She'd never expected to care for him, definitely not this much.  _

_ She never expected to care about anyone, not like this.  _

_ She gently rested her nose against his soft head, inhaling his warm baby scent. Despite his squishy, youthful looks, she knew that, if he took after his father, he'd grow up to be beautiful. He seemed like he would have her amber eyes, but his father's tawny-gold hair. His fluffy down was white and would likely darken, but it was evident that he wouldn't adopt her black hair, black wings. Pushing the thoughts about his looks away, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall asleep.  _

_ When he woke up, he was still cuddled to her chest, warm and comfortable and safe. He shifted and fussed at the pain in his mouth and twisting in his belly, squirming to try to get her attention. When she didn't move, he wiggled more, his downy wings unfolding for perhaps the first time and flapping against her arms and hands as he pushed against her to try to rouse her. He was hungry and he didn't like being hungry.  _

_ Nothing seemed to wake her and she just sighed in her sleep and pulled him closer. He squeezed out of her grasp and tumbled backwards then crawled to her and pushed at her, whining.  _

_ Finally, she opened her eyes with a soft groan. Seeing him staring at her, a pout twisting his features, she sat up and pulled him to her chest. She chirped whispering apologies but, hungry as he was, he had no interest in what she was saying, not that he could understand it quite yet anyway.  _

_ He suckled greedily, pulling at her and holding her, almost to make sure she stayed, and it felt almost retributive when the sharp tip of his first tooth, just barely emerging from his gums, scraped against her. She winced at the touch but held still. She felt awful. Her baby and she couldn’t even wake up when he was hungry. He drank messily, drops of milk leaking past his lips and rolling down his chin. He didn’t seem to care, or even notice. He just wanted his food. _

_ He drank more than usual and she felt another pang of guilt at that. She shouldn’t have let him grow so hungry. Despite his perceived annoyance earlier, however, he snuggled close to her when he finished. He didn’t stay still, though, and squirmed out of her arms. Once he tumbled away he rolled back to face her with a grin and shifted his wings to cover his eyes, one twitching slightly to reveal his eye peeking out at her. She smiled. This was one of the classic fledgling games. She would wrap her wings around herself and he would pretend he couldn’t see her. He would wiggle around, trying to find a place where her feathers didn’t envelope her, and would count that as ‘seeing’ her. Then she would cover her own eyes and he would hide in the makeshift nest they resided in. It seemed like senseless fun to an outsider, but it was common among angels. It helped strengthen and exercise the baby’s muscles, so they would be able to first stand on all fours then eventually pull themself up to bipedalism. It also taught the fledgling how to hide, should the need arise. _

_ They played this game until he was begging for another feeding. Despite his being obviously tired and falling asleep, he insisted. Sure enough, he barely got two mouthfuls down before he was fast asleep, milk dribbling out the corner of his mouth. _

_ This carefree routine did not follow a day/night schedule. The fledgling slept until he didn’t need to sleep, ate until he didn’t need to eat, then played in the time between. At some point during play, his chirps, which had been growing in number but not coherence, formed into his first word. _

_ “Mama!” He squealed as he found a spot her wings didn’t cover. Not in English, of course. He didn’t know such a language existed. Then, sensing his mother’s delight at the word, he grinned and bounced, wings fluttering. “Mama! Mama!” _

_ He was still buzzing with his excitement by the time they finished their play and he ate again, gazing up at his mother with happiness in his eyes, which were now more amber than blue. The feeding, the feeling of getting food in his stomach, calmed and subdued him and despite his excitement, it wasn’t long before his eyes were closing and his sucks were losing strength. He fell asleep, as always, pressed up to his mother, her heartbeat echoing in his ears. _

_ It wasn’t too much longer before he discovered that other beings resided in this place. _

_ They were loud. They came in, banging around and making noises he’d never heard before. They woke him up and, so accustomed to their routine, he began nuzzling his mother, searching for food. At their presence, she rolled from lying on her side to crouching, wings curled defensively around him as she hunched over like a gargoyle, shrouding him completely. _

_ If they hadn’t forced her to conceive him, they wouldn’t have been able to tell he existed. _

_ As they grew nearer, she pressed him closer to her, hand against his head as she bared her fangs at them. She hadn’t seen them much since he was born, only when they gave her food.  _

_ But they didn’t have food with them now. _

_ Annoyed at the change in routine, he tried to regain it by squirming to reach for his food. He knew now where it came from and he wanted it. He managed to free an arm from his mother’s tight grasp and stretched to try to get to his food. For the first time, however, he was denied food and he whined unhappily, still struggling to get it. _

_ Her mistake was it moving him away from the side he was reaching for. The fledgling was crafty and once he realized that he could still get the ending he wanted, he took his opportunity, ducking his head and soon, he was eating the food he’d been trying so desperately to get. _

_ His mother had been trying to split her focus and realized too late what his intentions were. Now he was eating and would cry even louder when he was forced to stop. If he was forced to stop. She didn’t know what their intentions were, but she was sure they weren’t good and that was why she was protecting her baby so fiercely. Alas, her efforts were in vain, for one of them darted behind her and restrained her wings so the other could rip her baby from her grasp. It was actually somewhat of a struggle, because he refused to let go. However, the one taking him was cruel and tugged harshly on his wing, his mouth dropping open in a cry of pain and that’s when he was taken away. _

_ His mother struggled to get him back, reaching out for him. He, similarly, flailed in the intruder’s grip, trying to get to his mother, his safety. Fear, unlike anything he’d ever known, was flying through his veins, shutting away any rational thought he had, his mind a repeating loop of get away, go to safe, flee, run, food, run, get away. _

_ He sobbed as he flailed. What was happening? Why was it happening?  _

_ “Mama!” He shrieked. “Mama!” _

_ Then the one holding him said something. He didn’t understand what it was, but the tone was unmistakable and he was torn between freezing or flight-or-flight. He went with frozen, curling in on himself, tiny fuzz-covered wings moving to shroud his little body as he stared, wide-eyed and frightened at his mother. He was shivering, cold with fear, as the one holding him turned him around and began to do something to him. It moved his lips, exposing his few fangs. It then stuck a finger in his mouth and if he hadn’t been out of his mind with fear, he might have tried to bite it. It poked at the tips of the fangs that were poking through his gums, causing him to whimper at the sensitivity. It then took him to some structure he hadn’t known existed and laid him on his back, wings flattened uncomfortably underneath him. It then began moving his limbs around, poking and prodding. All he saw above him was long, dark hair. It was similar to his mother’s but longer, cleaner, smoother. _

__

~~ _******* _ ~~

__

_ He had never been concerned about his nudity, for he had never known clothes, but he had never felt so vulnerable and exposed as he did when it put a hand between his legs. It felt so wrong that he started sobbing harder, flailing and whimpering. It then did something to him that caused a flash of a sensation to travel through his bones. He didn’t know what it was, he didn’t like it, but it caused him to freeze up, barely breathing, violation swirling through him. He hardly registered when he was flipped onto his stomach and his wings were then similarly investigated, probing fingers mussing up his downy feathers, bending his wings this way and that. Face-down as he was, he was caught completely off-guard when it forced its finger- it had fingers? How? This was a monster!- painfully inside him. The sensation ripped a choked sob from his throat and his wings fluffed and angled in a way that, for angels, screamed ‘please stop please I’ll do anything’ but to this monster, it just spelled annoyance as it forced his wings to flatten and probed inside of him, ignoring his whimpering and wailing.  _

_ Then it was gone and he was lying, shivering on this horrible structure. His limbs were curled to his torso, so similar to the position that had once meant comfort and warmth for him. Then he was being picked up again and he couldn’t bear it- He started doing anything he could to escape. He flailed, he thrashed, he screamed loud as he could, wings flapping hard and wide as they physically could move, spreading them so far it hurt. His punishment for this was particularly cruel, as one wing was taken in hand and wrenched, twisted hard, so hard it almost broke the fragile bone. He screamed in pain, black dots sparking in his vision, his tiny body hardly able to take all the stimulation and pain. He was finally plopped on his feet, just a few feet from his mother who had just been released, and he stumbled over to her, bawling as he collapsed in her arms. He’d taken his first upright steps long before he was even supposed to take his first, more stable quadrupedal steps. _

_ Suddenly as they’d come, the monsters were gone. They were chattering to each other in their strange language, but he didn’t even register their exit.  _

_ He was too busy falling apart in his mother’s arms, sobbing as she held him close, rocking him gently, whistling softly as she carefully edged his unruly down to lay in its correct spot. Cradling him, she lovingly rubbed the ache from his twisted wings as she tenderly urged him to try to eat, to salvage what little of their routine she could. It was a battle- he was crying too hard to even be able to drink and then what he did manage to get down was thrown right back up not five minutes later. No more attempts were made, as he was too busy gagging and choking to even think of putting something in his mouth. Eventually, he was urged back to sleep. _

_ He didn’t eat for three wake cycles. _

_ His body’s hunger forced him to drink again and even that was halfhearted as he lay listlessly in his mother’s arms. He didn’t meet her eyes as he suckled, which he hadn’t done since he had just opened his eyes and couldn’t see here well enough yet to do so. _

_ Her heart broke for her baby, who didn’t deserve such treatment. He was too young for her to even explain what had happened to him. He wouldn’t understand. She barely did. _

_ It took far too long for him to meet her gaze again. His eyes were almost completely amber by the time he did. And even when he did, he looked so broken, so violated… _

_ Then, because only of course would it happen then, just as he was finally seeming to heal from the ordeal, they came crashing in again. She had been feeding him at the time and he flinched against her, reaching up to take hold of the notches at the back of her neck, which had hardly grown enough to be held onto. She crossed her arms over him and wrapped her wings around them, creating a feathery cocoon that she swore not to allow to be breached for fear that her son would be tortured in such a way again. _

_ It was not to be, however, for they knew ways to force an angel to comply and one of these involved wing-twisting, which grew less and less effective the older and stronger an angel was. Unfortunately, she was young. Very young. Her notches were still growing. She didn’t even have all of her flight feathers.  _

_ It was because of this that when they took hold of her wing, near the base, and wrenched it in the wrong direction, she screamed, wings falling from their protective cocoon, her grip on her baby tightening. Hands grabbed him and yanked him away from his mother. _

_ “Mama! No!” He wailed, reaching for her. She desperately tried to grab him but was yanked back by merciless hands on her wings. _

_ “Gavril!” She cried, struggling as her arms and wings were restrained. She was small, even for an angel, and they had little trouble lifting her and dragging her away from her baby, especially when they bound her flapping wings. “Gavril!” Her wails faded as she was taken from the room and disappeared. _

_ He cried for her, struggling against the hands that encapsulated him. “Mama!” He froze as he was shaken slightly and looked up only to feel his heart stop. _

_ Long, smooth, dark hair. _

_ Horrible memories he was just healing from threatened to drag him away as he stared at the hair. He felt himself curling up in an attempt to protect himself. _

_ But it was in vain and he lay on the structure- not in his nest- shivering and wondering where did Mama go, why wasn’t she here? Why did they take her? _

_ Eventually, he fell into a restless, unhappy sleep. The monster had left at some point and he was alone. He did not sleep very long- it was his first time ever away from his mother. At some point after he fell asleep again- for a very short, restless time- he climbed down from the structure he was on and into the nest, where he wrapped his wings around himself, staring sightlessly ahead of him as he waited for his mother to return. _

_ Ages later, he was exhausted but aching and light-headed from hunger- he could not fall asleep. That same rattle came and all of a sudden, she was flung back in. Her wings were messy, her hair was ratty- but she was there and he sat up, chirping and whistling for her and he crawled to the edge of the nest. _

__

_ She joined him in the nest and scooped him up, cradling him close. He didn’t even care that he was faint and shaking from hunger, he didn’t care that there was a strange, slightly- confusingly- familiar scent on her. He was just happy she was back. He whined as she moved him but immediately calmed as he realized she was just moving him to feed, which he did gratefully, suckling desperately to calm to ache in his stomach.  _

_ At some point during his drinking, he’d been so focused that he didn’t realize she’d moved them so she could lean against the side of the nest. He didn’t notice that she’d edged a wing underneath him to support him and he didn’t notice that she’d fallen asleep until he, finally satiated, pulled away to look up at her face. She was grimy and dirty and looked absolutely exhausted. _

_ But she still looked like home and he cuddled up against her chest, pulled her arm to wrap around him, and finally fell asleep with her heartbeat in his ear. _

_ Suddenly, she began to sleep more and more. Even as he would drink, she would usually fall asleep as he did, waking when he nudged her, or wouldn’t even wake up. When she was awake, though, she was holding him. It didn’t matter what part of him, she was constantly touching him. He had no arguments to this. It was when she didn’t touch him that bad things happened. Bad dreams and the monster and her disappearing. She was changing, too. She began to smell more like she did when he was little and tiny- he could barely remember anymore. But sometimes it was harder to sit on her lap now, like there was less space. _

_ At some point while he was cuddled up to her, debating whether or not to eat- It was right there, he could if he wanted. But she always fell asleep and he wanted to be with her- he finally asked, “What’s Gavril?” _

_ “You,” She replied. “You are Gavril.” _

_ “Me? Gavril?” _

_ “Yes, you,” She leaned to bump his nose with hers. “You’re Gavril.” She shifted him a little. “Now eat, you need food.” _

_ “But you sleep,” He protested. “Wanna be with you.” _

_ “I won’t fall asleep this time,” She promised. “I’m sorry I’ve been so tired lately, they-” She cut herself off. “Nevermind. Eat, love.” _

_ “What?” He asked. “What were gonna say?” _

_ “Eat,” She gently pushed his head but he resisted. _

_ “But I wanna know.” _

_ She sighed. “Eat and I’ll tell you a story?” _

_ Gavril hesitated. He wanted to know what she was going to say. But on the other hand, a story. And he was getting hungry… _

_ Wordlessly, he agred, beginning to suckle and closing his eyes momentarily at the taste but opened them again, gazing up at his mother. _

_ “Well,” She started, shifting him so she cradled him better. “There once was a little family, like us. Just a Mama and a Gavril. The monsters- they’re called humans- they took the Mama away. They made her do things she didn’t want to do. When they stopped making her do those things, their family was more than just Mama and Gavril. Now it was Mama, Gavril, and Castiel. But Mama and Gavril couldn’t meet Castiel for a long time. Castiel was very small and needed to grow inside Mama from some time and Mama had to sleep a long time. After they did that growing, but they were still too small, they moved to an egg. Castiel grew inside the egg but came out eventually and Gavril and Mama could meet Castiel. They were all very happy and when Mama wasn’t able to be with Gavril and Castiel, because she had to leave sometimes, Gavril made sure that protected Castiel, because Castiel was too little to protect themself.” She hesitated. “Do you remember when the monsters took me away?” _

_ He hummed a little in confirmation, paying rapt attention to the story. _

_ “Well, when they did, they gave us a Castiel. Castiel is growing in me now and you’ll get to meet them sometime soon. Then we’ll all be happy, like the story.” _

_ He swallowed, but didn’t move to get another mouthful. “But that means you leave.” _

_ “Only sometimes, baby,” _

_ “But then I have to protect Castiel.” He looked, wide-eyed, up at his mother. “But I can’t protect myself. They come and I try but then they do mean things and- And-” _

_ She nudged his head again, silently urging him to continue eating. Despite getting worked up and worried, he obeyed, but made it clear that he wanted an answer. _

_ “So long as you and Castiel are protected as best you can be, you’ll have done just fine,” She assured him.  _

_ “ ‘m gonna make sure Castiel doesn’t get any bad things,” He vowed. “Where’s Castiel in you?” _

_ “He’s right here,” She held a hand over her abdomen and he leaned to put a single, tiny hand over hers and he silently swore that nothing bad would happen to his Castiel, no matter what. She then moved her hand to comb against his thickening, now tawny hair. “Eat, love.” _

_ He obeyed, closing his eyes and, as was his habit after they’d taken his Mama and made him hungry, ate all he could then tried for more. _

_ “No,” She scolded every time she caught him doing it. “You’ll make yourself sick.” _

_ This time, she didn’t try to stop when he did it and, after checking, he found that she was getting the glazy tired look that she got when she was going to fall asleep. He made a few more strong sucks, forcing himself to swallow and struggling with the last mouthful, then lay against her, eyes slipping closed. _

_ He woke up and his belly hurt. He whined, curling up on himself, and the noise roused his already waking mother, who took him in her arms and examined him gently, so much nicer than the monster. She poked gently at his belly and, when he squirmed away with a strained groan, she shook her head. _

_ “You ate too much, didn’t you?” _

_ “No-” His denial was cut off by his stiffening at another painful cramp _

_ She shook her head and lay him on his back, rubbing his belly gently to help try to relieve the buildup in his belly. Eventually, it worked, and he crawled shamefacedly back to her lap. _

_ “ ‘m sorry Mama,” He mumbled. “I di’n’t mean to.” _

_ “I know,” She soothed, petting his wings and smiling at the soft purr that rumbled in his throat from the sensation. “You’re not causing problems, you just need to not do that because you won’t feel good.” _

_ He nodded with a soft sigh and turned in her lap. Usually, he would be eating right now, but he did not feel good enough to do that. _

_ “Castiel’s getting bigger,” He murmured, one hand resting on the swell of her stomach that competed with him for lap space. _

_ “They are,” She replied. “We’ll meet them soon enough.” _

_ ‘Soon enough’ soon seemed like it would take too long. _

_ As usual when the monsters came, the entire room crashed and it was loud. Once again, that horrible loudness came by and he flinched, curling in his mother’s arms. He wanted to be the strong, protective brother his Mama had described in her story, but he was so scared. He was so scared of the monsters. _

_ She held him tight and shrouded her black wings around the two of them, staring the humans down. One moved to try to push past her wing but the moment he did, she hit him over the head and caused him to stumble away. She hissed at them, baring her fangs as she held Gavril. _

_ One of the humans said something in their strange, gravelly language and the other left, returning soon after with a small clear thing with greenish things inside. It opened the thing and a strange smell was released into the air. After a few seconds, he noticed that he was feeling odd, kind of woozy. _

_ “Mama, I feel funny,” He mumbled. He looked up at his mother and was thoroughly disturbed by what he saw. _

_ Her grip on him had loosened and she was panting, like she was smelling the air. The monster holding the clear thing was moving and her gaze was tracking it- the greenish thing- with frightening intensity. He could feel her wanting to move, but she was resisting the urge, shaking her head with a dizzy look. The monster sprinkled some of the green stuff near them and that’s when everything went wrong. _

_ Her wings perked up and fluttered slightly. Her breathing grew heavier as she leaned closer to the pile and then her grip on him completely loosened and he tumbled off her lap as she let go of him and crawled over to the pile sniffing it and rubbing her face against it, wings fluttering. A hazy, dopey smile was growing on her face and she seemed boneless as she reacted to the green things. _

_ “Mama?” He called and she lifted her head. He could see something battling inside her, past the strange look in her eyes, and she looked like she tried to return to him but instead collapsed on her side, head landing near the pile, and she was lost to the green. _

_ He squealed as hands clasped around his sides and he screamed and struggled as he was picked up and taken away from his mother. Awful memories returned to his mind and he wailed, struggling against the hands. _

_ “Mama!” He cried. “Mama!” She lifted her head to look at him, but he didn’t recognize her. She tried to struggle to her feet again but seemed boneless and fell again. “Mama no! They’re gonna hurt me ‘gain!” _

_ The monster holding him snapped something and a cloud of the green stuff was thrown in his face. He sneezed as dust made its way into his nose and when he breathed in, a fuzzy feeling began to steal over him. He tried to shake it away, to struggle back to his Mama, but a few more panicked breaths and the fuzzy feeling took over and he fell limp, rubbing his cheek along some specks that had fallen on some surface he was laying on. He could feel panic swirling in his gut but why was he panicking? He started to move away and though his eyesight had started to go fuzzy, he could see his Mama getting smaller, watching him with the same expression he thought he might have. _

_ Wait- She was going away? That wasn’t right. _

_ He struggled to push past the fog in his mind and shook his head to try to dispel it. “Mama,” He moaned, trying to remember- “Mama!” He found new strength and presence of mind to struggle again. Were they taking him from his Mama? No! No! “Mama!” He wailed, his sudden fear helping throw off the fog hanging over his mind. _

_ Then, suddenly, something was over his nose and mouth. He thrashed, trying to get away, but his head was forcefully held still and, not understanding, his breathing grew quick and panicky once again. _

_ And then that fog came back, stronger than before. The thing covering his face didn’t leave until he had stopped struggling, and by then he was lost to it. A euphoric feeling soared through him and he began to giggle dopily, hardly aware of anything around him. _

_ “Mama,” He cooed, wings flutering as he hung limply from a pair of hands. “Feel funny,” _

_ His chirps sounded funny- like they were all connected and, paired with the strange euphoria, he started giggling, then laughing for real. “F-funnyy,” A hazy grin was spread over his face as he tossed down. It was more like he was set on his feet but doped up as he was, his legs didn’t seem to work and he fell onto his side. He continued to giggle, sometimes laughing hysterically over nothing. He struggled to move his own limbs but it was like he was either boneless, paralyzed, or both and he couldn’t. Or maybe he could but it didn’t feel like he was moving. _

_ He heard a noise above his head- or was it behind him? And looked to find the source. His vision had gotten fuzzy and less defined but he could see two dark shapes above him. He tried to reach out to them but found he was lifting his foot instead of his hand and dissolved into giggles. _

_ He woke up later, cold and confused. His head hurt and he felt heavy. He struggled to sit up with a groan and opened his eyes.  _

_ It was dim and quiet. The quiet was unsettling- he'd never been in complete silence before except for once. There was always his Mama's heartbeat and her breathing.  _

_ Except for the once that she'd been taken away.  _

_ He rubbed at his eyes and shifted to cross his legs. He couldn't remember what was happening, what was going on. Where was he? _

_ Moaning at the pain in his head, he shifted to walk around and search for his Mama. He stopped in surprise when he stepped and his toes slipped through dips under the floor. Curiously, he shifted and rubbed the floor and was shocked to see it move. He pulled on it and it revealed wire that criss-crossed over itself to form a woven floor. He frowned at it and continued exploring the new environment he found himself in, the wires feeling like they were impaling his toes. It hurt.  _

_ His next shock was when he found out that his new environment was much smaller than the nest he'd lived in and it was restrictive. The same wiring that was the floor also formed walls and, stretching up, he realized that there was a ceiling he could just touch if he really stretched his wings over his head.  _

_ But his Mama wasn’t there. Where was she? _

_ He hazily remembered faded green things and his Mama letting go of him. Thinking hard, his headache flared as he remembered something pressing over his mouth and nose and his head getting fuzzy and forgetful. Then they took him from his Mama.. _

_ A wail bubbled up in his throat as his stomach growled. His Mama wasn’t here? How would he eat? _

_ He kept wailing and carrying on, hoping his Mama would hear him and come feed him. He needed food! _

_ Fortunately, he managed to get someone’s attention. Unfortunately, this attention was from the monsters, who came banging in. It was only one, the long, dark hair one and he cowered away from it, whistling loudly. It growled something and, moments later, took hold of the new environment and shook it until, caught off balance, he fell to the floor. Then it kept shaking and he tumbled, squealing with fear and pain as his wing caught and feathers were torn out, into walls. Eventually, it stopped and, dazed and dizzy, he lay slumped on the floor, panting. His vision, which had just cleared up, was getting fuzzy again. As the monster said something in its language, he dizzily sat up, swaying. Nausea suddenly crashed into him and he managed to crawl a few steps away before hunching over, his stomach spasming as he threw up his last meal, the very one that had been interrupted when he was taken. _

_ The other monster came crashing in and he looked up miserably as he spat. This one had never touched him, only his mother, and it was dark. It said something and the other replied, then the first left. He would have cowered away from the one that was still there, the one that had made him feel so violated, but he could barely move without feeling like he would throw up again and spikes of pain would sizzle down his neck and spine if he moved his head very much. _

_ The dark one returned before the long-hair one did anything and put something against the wires of the wall, part of it poking through a hole. Then it opened part of the wires and put a round thing full of pellets in. He tried to move over to it but staggered as he moved, his stomach seizing. The dark one muttered something and reached in, closing a large hand around him, effectively pinned his wings with its other hand as it dragged him from the wire. His stomach heaved and he threw up on the hand as the motion aggravated him, but it finally seemed to settle afterwards. The monster made some noise, but didn’t do anything else except force him to lift his chin and pulled his eyes open wide. It glared at its companion as it stuffed him back in and straightened the floor cover. He was finally feeling well enough to investigate what it had put in and he wobbled over to the round thing, poking at the pellets. He picked one up and looked up at the monster that brought it in confusion. _

_ The monster reopened the side of the wire and reached in. He flinched away from the huge hand, trembling as it reached in and picked up a pellet, then withdrew. He watched the monster regard the pellet then smush it against the structure that held the enclosure, breaking into pieces. It then picked up a piece and, before he realized what was happening, it grabbed him and pushed the piece into his mouth. _

_ Once he was released, he spit it out. What was he supposed to do with that? _

_ This repeated for a while, the monster pushing pieces of pellets into his mouth and him spitting them out before the monster just shook its head, closed the wire and, after a discussion with the other monster, picked up the enclosure. The movement caused him to stagger, digging his fingers into the wall as the monster carried him away. He watched, terrified, as it opened a new thing. He bolted upright when he recognized his new surroundings. _

_ He was home. _

_ “Mama?” He called fearfully, brightening when her head drowsily lifted over the side of the nest, her face lighting up as she scrambled to her feet. _

_ “Gavril!” The enclosure was set down and, the moment the side was opened, he scrambled out, bolting into her arms. _

_ “Mama!” He whimpered, burying his face in her neck as she kneeled down to hug him tight. “I was scared. They made me be alone. The monster put a thing in my mouth.” _

_ “Are you okay?” She asked, pulling back to search his face. “They drugged me, that’s what the green stuff was. It’s called mint, it makes us act strangely. Did they give you any? I can’t really remember.” _

_ “It was weird. At first they did something when they were carrying me away and I started to feel funny but I realized they were taking me away from you and I got scared and my head got less fuzzy but then they covered my face and only stopped after I stopped wiggling and I felt so fuzzy- Mama, why would they do that? Why did they bring me back?” _

_ Just at that moment, something shoved his head down to his mother’s chest while the monsters snapped something. _

_ “They want me to feed you,” She answered her son. ‘They took you away too early, they thought you were old enough to eat solid food.” _

_ “What food?” _

_ “Solid food. It’s those pellets. That’s what I eat. You’re too young to eat it, though, you need more time to get bigger. They won’t understand that, I don’t think.” _

_ His head was shoved down and this time it hurt. He gave a pained cry and she shuffled backwards, lifting him and shifting him to lay on his back.  _

_ “Eat, Gavril. You need food.” _

_ Reluctantly at first, he obeyed. Remembering his hunger as the first drops made their way into his stomach, he began to suck ravenously, losing himself for a while and it was just him, his mother, and her milk. Unseen to him, the monsters began to leave. As they did, the dark one moved the dish to ust outside the nest, picked up a pellet, then pointed at him and she frowned at it but nodded.  _

_ He fed hungrily and she didn’t speak to him while he did so, letting her baby eat for the first time in far too long. Due to the drugging qualities of mint, she suspected that he’d slept for quite a while and then didn’t have anything to eat when he woke up. Luckily, it seemed that the monsters had realized that it wasn’t time and were leaving them. _

_ Finally, he finished eating and curled up in her arms. He was still so little. _

_ “Why would they take me away from you?” He asked. She shook her head. _

_ “I don’t know,” She replied. “But I think I was taken from my mother too. I hardly remember that far back.” All she remembered from that age was a warm, milky scent and black wings. _

_ “Did they make you feel funny too?” _

_ “No, I don’t think so. They just picked me up and took me away.” _

_ “Why does that stuff make us feel strange? What makes it so…” He trailed off, unsure of the word. _

_ “That green stuff is called mint. It’s a leaf but the dry version has something about it that makes us- They call it being ‘high’. It’s a drug, which is why it makes us act strange, and there’s something about the smell that does it to us. I’ve tried to hold my breath around it, it’s only when I breathe in again that it starts to make my head go wrong.” _

_ “Then we’ll hold our breath,” He decided. “If they do it again.” _

_ She shook her head. “They’ll just wait it out. We can’t hold our breath forever and just a tiny sniff of it will make you fuzzy enough that you don’t remember to hold your breath.” _

_ He frowned, but didn’t respond to that. “Is Castiel okay?” _

_ “Castiel is okay,” She replied. “It’s almost time for them to come to their egg. Then we’ll meet them soon.” She yawned and pulled him closer. “Go to sleep, love. Things will be better when we wake up.” _

_ “But I’m not-” He stopped, looking at her face, how exhausted she was. “Okay,” He cuddled up to her and closed his eyes. Lulled by her heartbeat, he soon found himself floating away, drifting off to sleep. _

_ He jolted awake when the monsters crashed into the room again. He blinked sleepily as he was pulled closer to her, black wings wrapped tightly around him. She growled at them, baring her teeth as they drew closer. As had happened before, her wing was twisted until she was forced to open them again and he was ripped from her grasp. This time, though, he wasn’t taken out of the room. Instead, the one holding him, the dark one, took him to the far corner while the other prevented his mother from following. He was struggling and whining until the dark monster took him by the scruff of his neck and pinned him down. He then watched as the monster opened the package that held the green stuff- the mint- and poured some on its hand. He knew, this time, what was about to happen and gulped in a big, dizzying breath just before the monster’s hand was clapped over his nose and mouth. He struggled to get away, kicking his legs out since his head and arms were immobile. Lungs screaming for air, he held out as long as he could until he had to take a breath- just a tiny one. It was short, hardly a millisecond, and hardly helped.  _

_ He struggled and kicked out, his movements growing weaker, though he didn’t realize it. His head was growing fuzzier, that single gasp of potent air taking hold, and his eyes fluttered as the pressure in his chest grew stronger. It hurt, why was he holding his breath? Oh yeah, because- _

_ He remembered just too late, as his sluggish mind didn’t surrender the information easily. He gasped in deep, seeking to replenish the air he’d lost, and almost immediately, the drug affected him and he forgot where he was. He was so much smaller and the monster hadn’t compensated for the change in size. They typically used the drug to calm the rowdier, larger male angels. This one was missing one of those key components and the dose should have been adjusted. After only a few seconds, the fledgling had fallen limp, deeply breathing the air leaking through the monster’s fingers and only getting more and more intoxicated by the drug. By the time he was returned to his mother, euphoria was shooting through him like fireworks- he could hardly stand, he could hardly think, he could hardly register anything he saw. All he felt was this dizzying euphoria, a doped up grin on his face as he tried to say something and found his slurred chirps utterly hilarious, his laughter effectively cutting off what he was going to say. Even if it hadn’t, he’d lost his train of thought. _

_ The scent of mint coming off his skin and breath was so strong, she could feel herself getting affected by it. She couldn’t leave him alone, though, not in this state. As she slipped her hands underneath him to pick up her drugged baby, giggles erupted from him, which didn’t help her any. His laughter shook him as she cradled him close to her and leaned back, trying her hardest to keep a level head and help him ride out his high. Why would they have just barged in for the sole purpose of drugging him? It didn’t make any sense to her. _

_ She sighed exhaustedly. She was supposed to be sleeping nearly full time by now. She was about to lay and needed her energy. Just as she was nodding off, she became aware of him shifting and moved him up, stroking his soft hair. He whined as she moved him and he shifted, reaching. _

_ “Hung’y,” He slurred. “Wan’ food. ‘M hungry.” _

_ “Just wait,” She murmured, unsure if he even heard her. It soon became apparent that he either didn’t or didn’t care because he just kept shifting and whining, his protests getting louder the longer he was denied what he wanted. Just as he started getting irritable and angry, she gave in, going against her better judgement and giving him what he wanted. She was afraid he would eat too much and make himself sick since he’d only eaten a little bit ago. As he drank, she shifted a little. The feeling of her fingers brushing his skin seemed to tickle him or amuse him because he burst into laughter so hard he started choking. She quickly moved him to face the floor of the nest and patted his back, trying to help him cough up the milk he was trying to breath past. Eventually, he spit it up and she tucked him close, relief coursing through her.  _

_ Even choking and unable to breathe, he was so dazed by the drug that he wasn’t even slightly afraid. He was lost, his mind swirling and vision spinning. He knew, though, that he was desperately hungry and turned to seeking out food. He was nearly unable to sense anything- his nose was full of the scent of mint, each breath sending him spiralling even more, and his sight was spinning and fuzzy. He tried to feel his way around but he felt so tingly that touching anything sent zaps of sensation through his limbs, which only caused him to burst into more laughter. _

_ Everything was funny to his inebriated mind. _

_ He suddenly felt himself flying again, which only caused more hysterical giggling. The involuntary movement stopped and he immediately began squirming, looking for something to stop this gnawing hunger.  _

_ With an unhappy sigh, she adjusted him to continue feeding but, dazed as he was, he would forget to keep eating and drift off, his eyes distant and hazy. The first time he did this, she tried to move him, only for him to start whining for food through his sporadic giggling. Since then, she just gave in and nudged him when he drifted away. _

_ Unfortunately, the strong mint scent wafting off him and the flecks of mint leaves clinging to his hair was only assisting his high. Noticing the leaf pieces, she tried to brush them out, only realizing her mistake too late when they instead floated up and into her face. She tried to blow them away but wasn’t sure if she got them all away. She could feel her own mind getting fuzzy as the time passed, She sharply shook her head, trying to dispel it, and reclined against a wall of the nest. Her tolerance was much higher than his, mostly because she was older and bigger than him, and she didn’t get giggly when inebriated, just dopey and relaxed. Her movement reminded him to continue feeding and he fluttered his wings before he resettled, moments later drifting away. _

_ As the flutter of his wings sent more minty pieces her way, her head fell back. She could feel herself slipping and grasped desperately at her consciousness, needing to stay aware so she could help her baby should something go wrong. She shook her head, hard enough to shake her entire body, bringing him back to awareness enough for him to get a few more swallows down before drifting back into giggling nothingness. She looked down at him and anger flared in her as she saw the spaced out look in his eyes and thought of what the monsters had done to her child. The emotion helped clear her head, but ultimately, it was not enough, as the fog fell over her and her muscles relaxed, tension draining out of her. This also meant that her hands fell to her sides and he tumbled down, away from her. He whined as his food source was ripped away from him, but his unhappiness melted away into more giggles and euphoria as tingly feelings zazzed through him. He tried to squirm away from the feeling but it followed him and soon he was shaking from breathless, uncontrollable laughter. He could feel his ribs aching from how much he was laughing, but this only contributed to his predicament. Soon, he was nearly suffocating from his own hysteria.  _

_ Eventually, despite the constant euphoria, he grew to dislike the zapping feeling and, though he laughed at basically everything else, like the way he stumbled drunkenly as he tried to walk, he didn’t find the zapping nearly as amusing. He ended up staggering to the edge of the nest, right where the dish of pellets was. Vaguely remembering something about them being food, he scooped his hand into the dish and hungrily shovelled pellets into his mouth, chewing them with a strange look on his face. The food was bland, but it was food and he was so, so hungry. His jaw tired quickly as he chomped through the hard pellets but he ignored it in favor of eating more of the pieces. He ended up sitting with his legs crossed and he sloppily shovelled handful after handful of the hard pellets into his mouth until he realized he couldn’t eat anymore. Not that his appetite had waned any, but he couldn’t keep chewing. It was just too much for him and he let the pellets fall out of his mouth- actually the majority of what he’d pushed in- and stumbled away from the dish in search of something softer. He tripped on a fold in the bottom of the nest, head head landing on his mother’s hip. He pushed himself back onto his feet and shuffled to look at her face. He couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not but a sudden wave of exhaustion crashed over him, so surprising that he lost his balance and fell, fast asleep before his body hit the ground. _

_ He woke up with a headache similar to the one he’d woken up with previously, but it was somewhat worse- He whined and hid his eyes from the light of the room and this eased the pounding in his head some. He groaned as his mother picked him up and pulled him over to her. As she tried to get him to feed, he queasily shook his head at the thought.  _

_ “Don’ feel good, Mama,” He moaned. Her hand smoothed lovingly down his silky baby hair. _

_ “I know,” She murmured in reply. “Go back to sleep, you’ll feel better when you wake up again.” _

_ “Why’d they force me to breathe the mint?”  _

_ “I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.” _

_ He slipped off to sleep, yet again, but it took a while. When he woke up, his headache was gone but he felt… Odd. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something wasn’t right. He frowned as he sat up and rubbed at his jaw, groaning at the ache. He glanced up as she walked past him and investigated the dish of pellets.  _

_ “Did you try to eat some of this?” She asked. He searched his memory but he could hardly remember even being let go. _

_ “I don’no,” He mumbled. “Wha’ happened? I don’ remember much, jus’ that they had mint ‘n one pinned me down so I couldn’t move and then I tried to hold my breath but I had to breathe and… that’s it.” _

_ She cooed softly and gathered him in her arms. He miserably huddled against her, closing his eyes as she cradled him and they returned to the nest, settling down. Once again, though, they were disturbed by the intrusion of the monsters. He was yanked from his mother once again and mint was pressed up against his face. It was less than the day before but still enough to send him over the edge, euphoria soaring through him once again. They left him with his mother and thankfully, he didn’t smell so strongly of mint that she wasn’t affected. _

_ This became a common occurrence, that the monsters would come in and dose him with more mint. And at some point, while his mother began to wean him from her milk and start him eating solid food, he began to crave the euphoric happiness the mint gave him. He began to look forward for the monsters to come and give him mint that, when he heard them coming, he would stop whatever he did and stand, quivering with near-excitement, on the edge of the nest. He began to grow ill-looking and he was constantly hungry and ate constantly but never seemed to gain weight. He actually seemed to lose weight despite the amount of food he constantly ate. His mother ended up sleeping constantly, so deeply that she couldn’t be roused,a dn he could be dosed twice before she woke. _

_ He was lying on his side when it happened. He was dazed, his head was stuck in its constant fog, and he was on cloud nine. But his mother ended up hunkering down underneath their scarce bedding, wings shrouding her, and seemed to disappear. He never got to find out why because, just as he was regaining his presence of mind, the monsters came back, this time tossing mint clouds at both of them, taking advantage of the potency of the herb and its strong effects on angels. When both were effectively doped up and it was guaranteed that she wouldn't be trying to stop them, he was seized again and stuffed back into the wire cage. He tumbled in and was captured by another laughing fit that was borne of nothing. _

_ Later, coming down from his high, he immediately began whining for more. He wasn’t given it and was instead thrust a bowl of pellets and given a shake that easily meant ‘stop’. He gulped the pellets down, ravenous as ever, and when done, he fussed. Eventually, mint was sprinkled in through the top and he was caught in the swirling waves of the drug. This became the new normal- He would come down from a high, be fed, then eventually receive another dose. The doses were small and soon, he found that they didn’t affect him as much so he began begging for more. _

_ Then, one day, The long-hair monster crouched in front of the cage and held up a bag of mint. He rushed forward, pushing his little arms through the wiring to reach for the bag but moved it away. He whined but waited as the front was then opened and it reached in, taking hold of his wing. He flinched at the touch and tried to pull his wings away, but the monster held on tight. To distract him, a small pile of mint was put in and he dived to it. The motion caused one of his downy feathers to be pulled out but, losing himself in his rapidly escalating high, he only flapped his wings in response to the sharp pain. Soon, he was allowing his feathers, which were turning from their newborn white to gold, to be plucked in exchange for his next fix. He spent almost all of his time high from mint fumes, given the amount that had been inside the cage, the scent lingering strongly. In the rare moments he was aware, usually just before another dose was administered, he would wake up and feel violated, exposed, but never remember why.  _

_ Then the doses stopped. No matter how much he complained and wailed for more, he didn’t get it. He was feverish, shaking, exhausted. He felt awful, empty. He didn’t find any joy in the tasteless pellets that were supposed to be food. He only found marginal happiness in his memories with his mother, but only the ones untainted by the fogginess of his highs. _

_ He was lonely. Desperately lonely and this likely contributed to the empty feelings. The only being he saw anymore was the long-hair monster and it only brought him food and even that was getting less regular and often than before. With how rare his feedings were anymore, he was dropping weight at an alarming rate. _

_ At one point as he lay listlessly on the floor, the long-hair monster reached in and pulled him out. He didn’t try to fight it and just lay there as it flipped him over and reached down. _

_ For the first time since it had started doing this, he got angry. Where did it get off biting him? He started thrashing around and ended up biting the monster. It drew back with a shout then cuffed him hard over the head. Blood welled up in the bite and the monster left, only to be replaced by a different one, one he had never seen before. The bit one returned soon after and it was holding a glinting piece of metal. The unknown monster restrained him quickly and easily and the long-hair one adjusted its grip on the piece of metal, which he could see was textured, Unable to move, he watched as the monster forced his mouth open and leaned in with the piece of metal... _

_ “ _ Gabriel! _ ” _

_ The metal was pushed into his mouth and began to move back and forth, an awful sound filling his head… _

“Gabriel, come back to us, please.”

_ It kept moving and moving and dust started to fall onto his tongue… _

“Gabe, come on kiddo,”

_ Finally, after so long, so long, he was pushed unceremoniously back into the cage. His mouth felt so strange… _

“Gabe, Castiel needs you. You’re scaring him.”

_ Gavril, with hesitation, reached into his own mouth to feel what they had done to his fangs and stumbled back, reeling. _

_ His fangs were no longer there. His teeth were flat. _

“Gabriel!”

The archangel jolted out of his vision and blindly scrambled away, still seeing green and metal and long-hair and-

“Gabriel?”

He blinked, rubbing at his eyes, and there was Dean. The man was sitting across from him- when had he moved to the futon?- with Castiel in his lap.

“Castiel,” Gabriel chirped hoarsely, reaching his arms out to his little brother. The fledgling crawled over and hugged Gabriel, holding him tighter when he noticed his shuddering.

“What happened?” Castiel peeped softly, hardly loud enough for Dean to hear.

“I don’t- I don’t know,” He frowned. “I remembered my life before you.” He did, frighteningly vivid. He could still smell phantom mint deep in the back of his nose. He could still, if he closed his eyes, see the monster leaning over him then plunging that textured strip of metal-

“Are you okay now?” Dean asked. 

“I… I think so. What- what happened?”

“Well, Castiel had his freak out because of the waiter but while I was getting you back into the tube, I must have hit your wings. I’m sorry, kiddo, really.”

Knowing Castiel was worried, Gabriel did the first thing he could think of. Lie. He pushed the guilt he knew would splash him after the he did it and want to avoid that,

“I’ll be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RECAP: Gabriel is assaulted by one of the monsters. Later, mint is used one them to relax his mother and to make it easier to take Gabriel away. Mint has drug-like effects on the angels but much more potent, faster acting, and Gabriel ends up getting addicted due to constant use. He suffers withdrawals and is assaulted while he is high but he does not remember it, just wakes up feeling violated. A monster tries to assault him and for once he fights back, biting it. He is then pinned down and his fangs are filed.
> 
> SO the series finale, huh? I reject it, there is no way that pathetic cop-out is actually the ending.
> 
> What do we think of this chapter? I was nervous about the assault and drug use parts, I wasn't too sure if I should have put them in. Thoughts? What did you think of a flashback chapter? Seeing what Gabriel sees - this time - when he has hi flashback episodes? Gives us some backstory too...
> 
> ALSO- I am thinking of starting a Tumblr for this fic, mostly so I can post my art for this (I can't figure it out on AO3) and so I can give out tidbits and explanations (Like how the notches look). Thoughts? I'm not gonna do it if you guys don't want it.


	14. Chapter 14

That night, Dean lay awake. The angels were fast asleep, one on his arm and the other on his torso- he wasn’t sure who- but he couldn’t sleep.

Gabriel had acted so strange when he came out of his flashback. Granted, it wasn’t like he had that much to go on, but this was odd. Castiel’s episode, brought on by the water in the tub, had only been twenty minutes or so- not as long as when he’d fallen into the sink, but that could have because this was mostly voluntary. But Gabriel? Gabriel’s had lasted _hours_. By the time he came out of it, Castiel had recovered enough to ask if he was okay. Sure, he hadn't said anything else and was reclusive and unresponsive all night, but it was better than last time so Dean wasn't complaining.

But what did Gabriel _see_? He’d been jumpy all night and didn’t want to move and kept putting his hands in his mouth. He’d eaten dinner just fine, but other than that, Dean had to keep pulling them away for fear that he’d end up biting himself. He couldn’t help wondering what had prompted his strange near-obsession. It also brought on the question- why hadn’t he been so worried about Castiel biting himself? Even now, he probably had four fingers jammed in his mouth, why had Dean never prevented that?

With a sigh, he dashed those thoughts away. He didn’t have the brainpower to worry about that right now. He hadn’t realized how mentally exhausting dealing with two traumatized baby angels could be, but he was realizing now and honestly? He was spent. When he’d agreed to watch them for Sam, he hadn’t expected this. 

Not that he’d change it. Because Sam still would have gotten in his wreck and then Dean, who wouldn’t have had any contact with angels, wouldn’t have offered to keep them. APS would have taken them, they could have split up… No matter what happened now, Dean was sure things had already ended better than they would if APS took them.

But he didn’t know if APS would approve him for ownership yet. He hadn’t gotten a call from them, nor had he gotten an email. It had been less than a week, but every day that passed filled him with more anxiety. What if he wasn’t approved? What if Gabriel and Castiel were tossed into a shelter? Hesitant as he was to admit it, he’d gotten attached to the angels in the two weeks he’d had them and didn’t want to give them up or see harm come to them. Their flashback episodes were disturbing enough, with that blank emptiness in their eyes and their chilling stillness- every single time it happened, they looked dead. Then the days of seeing Gabriel in pain? His cries as his wings sprouted? They broke his heart. He was just a baby- they both were- and neither deserved to go though what they’d gone through. Their trauma, the pain… He wanted to hold them close and never let them go and squeeze all the bad things out of them until they were happy little fledglings, how they would have been if they hadn’t been raised in a farm.

But alas, that couldn’t happen and Dean just cuddled them closer, listening to their soft breathing as they slept. He could feel that both were fully relaxed, none of their waking anxieties following them into sleep.

A while later, Dean’s eyes slipped closed. It seemed, however, that he was destined not to get a full night’s sleep for, not even an hour later, he was jolted awake. This wasn’t the gentle waking that he’d gotten before, with Gabriel’s shifting and whimpering. No, this was a sharp, cut-off scream, a kick in the chest, and a faceful of feathers paired with the hard _thwap_ of multiple beating wings against his face.

Groggy from the sudden wake-up call, Dean sat up, finding that the angel that had been curled up on his chest was gone. Turning on the light and squinting at the brightness, he found Castiel blinking sleepily from his hip, fingers jammed in his mouth. Meaning- _oh no_.

After a few minutes, he found him. Gabriel was pressed between the wall and one of the cubby-shelves, his back to the corner, knees bent to his chest, feet crossed, toes curled, fingers laced through his hair. From this angle, Dean could see that the archangel’s eyes were wide open and that he was panting, tears beading up in his eyes.

“Gabriel?” Dean whispered. At even the slight sound of his voice, Gabriel flinched, hands curling deeper into his hair as he whimpered. Dean tried again a few minutes later. “What’s wrong?”

The little one merely shook his head, unwilling- or unable- to answer. He was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane and gasping like he was drowning. It took a few minutes for his tired mind to catch up, but finally, Dean understood- Nightmare. He shifted a bit, intending to get up, but froze when Gabriel flinched with a squeal, hands gripping his head as he cowered back. Uneasily, Dean eased back to the futon.

Helpless, he stayed there. He had no idea how to help Gabriel and it seemed like _he_ would be unable to help in general. Just moving caused panic to fly through the little winged creature. At some point, Dean noticed, Castiel had fallen back asleep, an arm flung over Dean’s stomach and his face cuddled into his side. The man reached down and scratched at Castiel’s wing, right around the high joint where the limbs folded. Right now, with his wings so little and stubby, they didn’t reach too high, but Dean had seen pictures of adult angels whose wings arced high above their heads, depending on how they were held. Unconsciously, the limb pushed up against his hand and Castiel mumbled softly, shifting a little.

“Gab,” Dean just barely heard the quiet, very quiet mumble as he continued scratching at Castiel’s wing. It seemed, however, that Gabriel heard it too- his head lifted. In the dim light, his whiskey eyes glinted strangely. Or that could have been the tears still lingering in his eyes. After a while of watching Dean petting the sleeping Castiel’s wings, Gabriel seemed to grow uncertain. He was moving forward, emerging from his little corner, but he’d back back into it, wings tightly curled behind him. He did this multiple times.

“You want to come up?” Dean whispered. Now, it wasn’t just to keep from spooking the archangel- it was also to keep the other from waking. Gabriel seemed to shrink down but hesitantly- very hesitantly. He was watching Dean like the man would yell at him- he began to creep out of his corner. Dean stayed perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. Eventually, Gabriel began to climb up the side of the futon. He carefully padded up to be about level with Dean’s shoulder and settled down, his wings tightly folded, pressed up against his back so tightly that the feathers seemed to merge. 

He looked, and behaved, like a kicked puppy that was asking for pets, Dean realized. At this, he began to carefully lift his free hand, the one that wasn’t petting Castiel, and reached towards Gabriel.

“May I?” He asked softly. At the slight nod, he began petting the archangel’s wings. Despite him closing his eyes at the touch, Gabriel still seemed uncertain. “What’s wrong? If there’s something you need, you have to ask for it, okay? I don’t quite understand.”

“ ‘M ‘kay,” Gabriel mumbled in response. “J’st…” He shifted back to his spot on Dean’s chest and set his chin on his hands, eyes closing.

But something still seemed wrong.

It was realized, finally, when Gabriel spoke up again. Dean was just drifting off when a small voice whispered, “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“C’n… Stay there?” Without waiting for an answer, Gabriel’s head disappeared from Dean’s hand. “J’s…”

In the dim light, Dean could see Gabriel’s wings shifting. The fledgling reached up and shifted Dean’s hand back and the man had to hold back a flinch of surprise when fuzzy downy feathers met his fingers. As it was, he was completely still, eyes flickering over the still form on top of him.

Somehow, Gabriel had managed to shift his top wing out of the way so he could push his middle wing against Dean’s hand. He was totally frozen, seemingly trying to assess his own reaction.

“Do you- Is this okay?” Dean asked. “Do you want me to move a little?” Gabriel nodded mutely, a shuddering sigh escaping him as Dean began scritching those fuzzy yellow feathers. His shoulders shifted and Dean stopped as new tears began crawling down his cheeks.

“No- Please-” Gabriel let out a whimper and pushed his wing against Dean’s hand again. He continued scratching carefully- so carefully- at the down-covered limb and moved his other hand from Castiel’s dark wing to hold the back of Gabriel’s head as the fledgling started to shake. Whenever Dean tried to stop to see if he was okay, some kind of choked sound would come from the angel and he would desperately push his wing back against the hand.

So Dean didn’t stop.

Eventually, though, he was getting concerned. Gabriel was whimpering, just slightly, and he feared that this was making him worse- he’d had a terrible flashback episode just a few hours earlier and before that- despite both of them miraculously having no hangover- he’d been horribly drunk. So, finally, he pulled his hand away.

“Gabriel,” He started. “Are you-”

“Please!” Gabriel sobbed, flinging himself across Dean. He was really crying now, whimpers coming with each breath. He scrabbled to grasp at Dean’s shirt, burying his face in his chest. “Please!” He whimpered. “Please. Please.”

Mystified, Dean obeyed, hesitantly laying his hand on the second wing. At the slight twitch of prompting, he began scratching at it again and a new wave of tears cascaded down Gabriel’s face.

“Feels good,” He whimpered brokenly. “Feels good an’ I never got- Never got-” He cut himself of with a choked sob, but it only seemed to make things worse and he was gasping for air, crying so hard that he seemed near choking on his own tears. “Never got- She was-” His shivering was close to making him fall over, Dean realized, and his shuddering sobs were shaking him so hard, they weren’t helping. Dean used a hand to hold him still, the other dutifully scritching away at the stubby wing. “She- Dean, I-” Gabriel cut himself off this time by clapping his hands over his mouth, eyes flying open. Dean immediately understood, rolling off the futon (the other way, so he didn’t crush Castiel), and hurried to the bathroom. He didn’t quite make it in time and the motion set Gabriel off for the second round of throwing up that night. Dean crouched in front of the toilet, holding the tiny creature over the toilet. He could feel his muscles clenching and finally relaxing when he was done. 

Gabriel lifted his head and froze when he saw the mess on the floor. “I-I’m s-sorry! I’m s-sorry!” He wailed at the sight, curling up on himself. Dean pulled him into his lap, cradling him carefully. In all honesty, it wasn’t that bad of a mess. Nowhere near what he’d had to clean up while they waited for Gabriel to come out of his flashbacks.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” He tried to reassure the angel, pulling his hands away from grasping at his hair. “It’s just a little mess, it won’t even take too long to clean up-”

Unfortunately, he had to stop, as Gabriel had worked himself up so much that he was throwing up again. 

“Okay, okay, it’s okay, just get it all up,” Dean resorted to rubbing the little one’s back, between his wings where he’d learned was safe but when he’d first started taking care of him. “Get it all up then we’re gonna go get some water so you don’t get dehydrated.”

“I-I’m s-sorry, Dean,” Gabriel mumbled as he spat. “D-didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay,” Dean replied, hoping he’d be done soon so he could hold him close. The fledgling was starting to shake an awful lot.

“Didn’t mean to make a mess,” Gabriel continued as if Dean hadn’t spoken. “Didn’t mean to get drunk. Didn’t mean to throw up. Didn’t mean to scratch wings but it felt _so good_ an’ I _couldn’t stop_ I couldn’t let myself _stop_ ‘n I shouldn’t- shouldn’t let you but it felt _so good_ and it shouldn’t feel good I never-never-” He had to cut himself off again, now just dry heaving or spitting up bile- Dean wasn’t sure at this point. “ ‘M sorry,” He whimpered.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Dean murmured, mentally working through the list of reasons Gabriel had given him. Couldn’t let himself stop? Stop what, enjoying getting his wings petted?

“There’s _everything_ to be sorry about!” He wailed. “ ‘M not _supposed_ to like it ‘ n make messes ‘n ‘m _annoying_ ‘n had to go to the _doctor_ ‘n you had’ta stop work ‘n Sam’s hurt and- and-” He slumped over with a miserable groan. He had been standing on Dean’s leg but now was leaning against his hand. “ ‘M _trouble_ ‘n I cause _problems_ ‘n I’m _sorry_!”

“Gabe, you don’t cause problems,” Dean replied, concern growing. He was a _baby_ , he shouldn’t feel so worthless! “Sure, you have a difficult time with things, but that’s okay. Everyone has problems with things and fears-” He knew he wasn’t getting through to him as the fledgling shook his head vigorously, then had to stop as he leaned against the toilet woozily.

“Y’ don’ getit,” He slurred. Den figured he was worn out- he had been crying hard for a while, he’d woken suddenly from a nightmare, _and_ he’d thrown up. That’s exhausting. “ ‘M not _s’posed_ to like it. ‘M not _s’posed_ to. They said no, they said it was bad ‘f I liked it, ‘m not supposed to like it ‘n they didn’t like it if I did so they pulled my feathers-” This bout of dry heaving was particularly bad and sounded painful. 

“Are you talking about me petting your wings?” Nod. “Gabriel, who said you couldn’t like it? Was it the farm people? You know you can’t believe anything they said about you or Castiel-”

“Wasn’t farm people,” Gabriel muttered. “I _know_ they’re wrong. Gave me mint ‘n said Cassie wasn’t worth nothin’ but he’s worth _ev’rything_ ‘n nobody believes me.”

It finally seemed like Gabriel was done retching, so Dean pulled him onto his lap, petting his hair. This was safe.

“ ‘N I never liked anyone touchin’ m’ wings ‘fore but they was dif’rent wings ‘n Cassie looked so happy ‘n I had’ta asked, I had’ta ‘n it was only gonna be a second _I swear_ but it felt so good tha’ I couldn’t asked you to stop ‘n then I started ‘memberin’ what they said ‘n I couldn’t- I couldn’t stop-”

“You liked this?” Dean asked, quickly, smoothly flipping Gabriel onto his stomach and nudging his way underneath the first wing to start petting at the second. The angel started squirming, top wings arcing up. 

“N-no stop, s-stop-” Gabriel protested weakly. “S-stop I-” A soft groan escaped his lips. “ “m not s’posed to- to like it-” Despite his obvious struggles, the wing pushed against Dean’s hand. It looked more reflexive than anything else and bliss and unhappiness were warring through Gabriel’s face. He couldn’t protest this because it felt so good, so relaxing, but he had to protest because- what, someone had told him he didn’t deserve to be petted right? No- to _purr_. He wasn’t allowed to purr? But he’d before, no problem. Or was he not allowed to enjoy people petting his wings?

“S-stop…” Gabriel’s voice rattled and trailed off due to the purr rising in his throat. Dean looked at him- He was lying face-down in the man’s lap with a deep frown etched onto his face- but it was being combated by the slight blissful smile twitching at the corners of Gabriel’s lips. Dean gently dug his fingers in deeper and his purring got louder, his feathers fluffed up, the blissed look began to win the battle and his frown started to fade. "N-no…" He trailed off again, purring too hard to speak. Despite himself, Dean could feel him relaxing as his wing pushed harder against his hand. 

He shifted Gabriel, just a little to hold him more securely, and had to stop petting for just a few seconds. In the gap, Gabriel moaned protest and flared his second -and third?- pair of wings until he hit Dean's hand. 

"Hold on," The man muttered as he pulled Gabriel onto a more secure hold, then started petting the wings again. "Don't want to drop you."

Gabriel burrowed his head in Dean's shirt, clinging to the fabric with tight fists. "Don' s-stop," Dean wasn't sure if the fledgling had said anything, but if he did, his voice was so shaky and rattly by purrs that he could barely be understood. But Dean didn't stop. Seeing Gabriel so blissed out and happy and relaxed was a refreshing opposite to what he'd gotten used to. After shifting a bit, Dean started petting the other wing, then spread out his hands to pet all four new wings and Gabriel _melted_. Like, completely boneless, his purring getting so loud and forceful that he was physically shaking.

Eventually, after a while of sitting on the bathroom floor, petting the wings and listening to Gabriel’s purring, Dean realized there was another sound laced in with the vibrating purr- Kind of a low, drawn-out whistle. He only noticed the sound when Gabriel’s purring had quieted a bit, wasn’t so loud. Dean decided it was kind of a coo (where did that word come from?) and resolved to look it up. He then realized that he should have done a _lot_ more research on angels than he had so far. He really wasn’t all that prepared, now that he thought about it…

Sitting there, lulled by Gabriel’s coos and purrs, Dean began to doze off, despite how uncomfortable the tile floor was. Leaning against the cabinet under the sink gave him a bit of a backrest so he could relax a bit and even though it wasn’t terribly comfortable… He was tired. He was really, honestly, quite exhausted. He hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since… Since Gabriel’s fever had spiked and he’d been taken to the hospital. When was that?

The second day he’d had them. That Sunday night, really. Just over a full day. Almost two full weeks- No wonder he was so tired. He’d never been one for a healthy sleep schedule, but sleeping in less than one-hour stretches, for two weeks? It was a surprise he hadn’t fallen asleep behind the wheel at this point. And _that_ was a disturbing thought. Because what had happened to Sam… Could easily happen to Dean or his- _Sam’s_ angels. Dean had to remind himself that they didn’t belong to him. Not yet, anyway.

Dean didn’t realize he’d drifted off to sleep until Gabriel began to squirm, which jolted him awake and he looked down at the golden fledgling. He’d fallen asleep too and was twitching and wiggling. His movements calmed, though, a few minutes later. However, they eventually came back and he started mumbling under his breath as quick frowns crossed his face then eased, only to come back mere seconds later. His breath was speeding up and, through his thin pajamas, Dean could feel his heart racing.

“Gabriel, wake up,” He murmured, shaking the young archangel slightly. He came awake with a gasp and he tensed, six wings curling around him like a living blanket. “You okay?”

“Y-yeah, jus- just a dream,” Gabriel mumbled in reply. He kept muttering, though, “Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream,” He was distractedly playing with his hands and would occasionally pull his big pair of wings around himself so he could pet the feathers. He looked almost afraid to let go of his feathers.

“Gabe?” Dean asked after a few minutes of holding the fledgling. He was shaking.

“ ‘M okay. We- we should probably go back to- to the futon.”

Right- Duh, of course. “Okay, you sure you won’t throw up anymore?”

Gabriel shook his head as his gaze drifted to the spot on the floor near the toilet, where he’d made a mess- But it was clean. Unbeknownst to him, Dean had cleaned it up at some point. 

“That a no you don’t feel good enough or no you won’t throw up?”

“Won’t throw up,” Gabriel said this softly as he retreated back into fiddling with his hands- looking at his fingers, Dean realized. His claws. His toying with his feathers no longer seemed so random, either- He was carefully feeling along each one, tugging very, very gently.

“They didn’t pull all of ‘em out,” Gabriel spoke even quieter than before. He was nearly whispering and Dean had to strain to hear him. “Some just fell out. We got sick, sometimes, and sometimes there wasn’t much food ‘n I promised that I’d- I’d-” He trailed off at this and Dean was left wondering what Gabriel had promised. 

“Well, let’s get back to the futon, alright? Then I’ll grab you some water, and Castiel, if he’s awake. With how much you guys threw up last night, you’ve got to be pretty dehydrated. I meant to get you water then, but I got distracted.” It was the flashbacks, they both knew but didn’t say. The flashbacks had distracted Dean. Particularly Gabriel’s.

The man lifted the archangel and nestled his hand in the fluffy down of the third set of wings- It was easier to wedge his hand under the second pair of wings and not worry about setting Gabriel off. When he carried him out, they discovered that Castiel was awake and sitting up. The young fledgling’s gaze darkened when he noticed Dean’s hand buried in Gabriel’s feathers.

“Good, you’re up,” Dean murmured as he set Gabriel down, not having seen the expression. “I’m gonna get you guys some water then we’re going to try to get back to sleep. I have to- _Shit_ , I have to work tomorrow and I need to see if Bobby’ll let me bring you.”

As Dean was filling two plastic cups with water, Gabriel and Castiel started shifting and talking to each other, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying. When he came back, Castiel was sitting with his back to Gabriel, the older fledgling doing something with his dark feathers. 

“Hey, guys,” Dean murmured, not wanting to startle them. They _were_ jumpy, after all. “I have your water.”

“Hold on,” Gabriel grunted in reply. He was kneeling behind Castiel and, as Dean got closer, he saw that he was smoothing and pulling on each individual feather, moving his hand near the base of Castiel’s wing occasionally and smoothing it over the feathers he’d straightened.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked. 

“Preening. We can’t reach all our feathers so we have a friend do it for us. We usually do it regularly but I’ve been sleeping so much and been so sick that I haven’t been able to do it for Cassie and-” Gabriel tugged out a feather and set it beside him with a whispered apology at Castiel’s flinch. “And he’s been getting messy and fray-y.”

Dean looked at the pulled-out feather and, sure enough, it was pretty ragged and in fairly bad condition. “If you told me what to do, I could have helped,”

Both angels’ feathers puffed at this and Gabriel began smoothing a hand down Castiel’s as he shook his head. “Only us. Nobody else is allowed to preen, just us.”

Dean wasn’t _quite_ sure what he meant by that, but he was pretty sure that meant nobody, angel nor human, was allowed to preen the brothers besides themselves. Only Gabriel was allowed to preen Castiel and vice versa.

“Alright, well, is there any way you can do it when it isn’t… 2:48 in the morning?”

Gabriel fixed Dean with a dark glare. “Cassie needs preening. I’m preening.”

Dean lifted his hands in surrender and put the two cups down on the table. “Well, I’m gonna lay down behind you, tell me when you’re done so you can get a drink.” He did so and was nearly asleep when he felt shuffling next to him and one of the angels shook his arm. Drowsily, he lifted his head to see that they were no longer sitting as they had been and were now next to him, looking down.

“Done?” He asked. They nodded and he sat up, noticing that Castiel’s wings were much smoother and glossier than before. “Alright, Castiel, take this,” He carefully handed the fledgling water and turned to give Gabriel his. Only a few seconds passed before there was a jump and he turned to see Castiel had dropped his cup and was flinching away, wings moving to wrap over his head.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Dean reached to take the cup off of Castiel’s leg- the fledgling had been sitting down- and set it on the table. He hadn’t spilled much and most of it was on himself. “Gabriel, can you go to the closet and grab a towel or two?”

Gabriel nodded and, after giving his cup to Dean to put down, he slithered off the futon and pattered over to the closet, struggling to get the door open but, just as Dean was about to get up and help him, he managed to get it. Dean then turned his attention to Castiel.

The fledgling was trembling and had curled into a small ball, wings shrouding him as best they could. He froze with a quickly-silenced squeak as Dean picked him up.

“Let’s go get you dried off,” The man murmured. “You’re not in trouble, promise. We’re just going to find you new pajamas so you’re not sleeping in wetness. We don’t want you to get the rash you had when Jody found you, do we?” Castiel didn’t respond but Dean tucked him into one arm as he searched through his bag for a new change of pajamas. After founding one, he took Castiel to the bedroom, deciding that he didn’t want to risk him falling on tile, not right now. The carpeting in the bedroom would cushion him. Dean wasn’t sure why he was suddenly concerned about falls, but he wasn’t going to argue. He accepted the towel from Gabriel then mostly closed the door.

“Alright, let’s get the wet clothes off of you,” Dean tried his best to speak in a soothing tone. He wasn’t angry about the water on the futon- it was just water and it _was_ time to change the sheets. But by now, he knew that Castiel often jumped to the worst conclusion, usually that Dean was angry and would hurt him in some way. Thinking about it, he realized that Gabriel did it too.

“B’ I liked those jammies,” Castiel mumbled as Dean pulled his wet pants off and dried his legs.

“I know. Here, tell you what- Tomorrow, after work, we’ll do a load of laundry. By the time it finishes and everything’s dry, it’ll be time for you guys to go to bed and they’ll be nice and warm. Sound good?” Castiel nodded as Dean reached around him and undid the snaps on his shirt below his wings. The fledgling was quickly dressed- now in footie pajamas- and carried back to the futon. He was set next to his brother on the floor and told to wait while Dean changed the sheets.

Finally, they managed to get back to bed. With a tired sigh, Dean turned off the light as Castiel and Gabriel snuggled close to him. Within moments, he'd fallen asleep. 

He barely woke up to his alarm. In all honesty, it was Castiel shaking him that woke him up. He sat up with a groan and groped blindly for his phone to turn the alarm off. After he woke up a little more, he called Bobby and confirmed that, even though Gabriel wasn't sick, it was still okay for him to bring the two fledglings. Then he checked his email and froze. 

  
  


_From: mdavies@angelprotectiveservices.uk_

_To: dwinchester5683@gmail.com_

_Mr. Winchester,_

_Your application for angelic ownership is currently being processed. However, we have a few more questions. Please reply to this email and we will set a time to meet. It should be brief; only about 30 minutes._

_Respectfully,_

_Michael Davies_

_APS_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty! Poor Gabe and his self-esteem issues... Constant abuse does that to anyone, even angels, I guess. 
> 
> What did you guys think of the flashback last chapter? Do you want more flashbacks or dreams? To be completely honest, I'm thinking of having one of the next chapters have a dream or flashback in it- I have something planned for Cas' point of view and another for Gabe, it just depends on which I do first.
> 
> You will also notice that I changed the city and state this takes place in! This is purely for geographical reasons, it will make sense in the future. It is now in Boulder, Colorado, not Lawrence, Kansas. Do keep in mind, I am not using ANY features or stores from the actual Boulder! It is more of a way for me to keep a general area of where they are.
> 
> Please comment with thoughts! I love seeing your reactions!


	15. Chapter 15

Dean quickly typed a reply. The answer came only a few minutes later and soon, their meeting was set up- 7 that night, it would be just after Dean got off work. At some cafe he’d never gone to but it was fairly close to Bobby’s, so it wasn’t too far out of the way. Davies had requested that he bring Gabriel and Castiel, which was a good thing because otherwise they would have either been left with Bobby (if the man was willing) or left in his car. Considering that it was May and starting to get hot, Dean did  _ not _ want to leave the angels shut up in his car.

His shift went by quickly. He’d managed to convince Gabriel and Castiel to stay in the locker room and at some point, Bobby had come by and herded the two to his office. Gabriel’s four new wings and sudden rambunctiousness was a point of interest among his coworkers, but thankfully, nobody tried to pet Gabriel. That wouldn’t have ended well, Dean knew, and it was  _ definitely _ not what he needed, not with an APS meeting looming.

Finally, the meeting time arrived. He’d gotten to the cafe just two minutes before seven and walked in with Castiel in his arms and Gabriel clinging tightly to his hand, golden wings folded close to his back. He spotted Davies easily, the man already sitting at a table with the same purple folder he’d had last time. He had a coffee cup sitting in front of him and, shockingly, he was alone. No Lady Bevell in sight.

He looked up from his phone when he noticed Dean coming over and tucked the device away in his pocket.

“Mr. Winchester, hello,” He greeted with a nod, not moving to get up to shake his hand, an obvious decision considering Dean was holding Castiel. 

“Hi,” Dean replied. “Where’s uh, Lady Bevell?”

Davies grimaced, though the expression was a small one and quickly hidden. “Due to circumstances at the office, Lady Bevell has been taken from your case and I am working it solo.”

Dean nodded as he set Castiel down on a chair, Gabriel climbing up onto another. Davies had picked a four-seat table but had moved three of the chairs to face his. Once the angels were settled, Dean sat.

“I must say, Gabriel is looking a lot better than he was when I met him,” Dean already knew from the meeting before that he preferred Davies to Bevell, but for some reason, this statement cemented the fact. Then, at that moment, Gabriel turned and Davies saw the new development. “Is that- Does he have  _ six  _ wings?”

“Uh, yeah. His sickness and pain was apparently because he was sprouting the other four,” Dean replied, somewhat clumsily and cursed himself. He was a grown man, he could do better than that! It wasn’t like he was talking to his school principal!

No, just the man that could decide whether or not to let Dean keep the angels.

“I talked to a friend of mine and one of his angels helped out with the process. Apparently he could have died-”

“Yes, I’ve heard that,” Davies, thankfully, cut Dean off. “He’s an archangel, correct?” At Dean’s nod, he pursed his lips. “They’re quite rare. This may affect the approval process…” He pulled out one of his papers and wrote something down. Glancing up, he noticed Dean’s slightly worried look. “Rest assured, if it were up to me, I’d have approved you for ownership last Sunday. You obviously care for them and are putting effort in to make sure they have a good home. As it is, I’m putting in as many good reviews as I can. That’s partly why I requested this meeting, so I could feasibly have a better opinion.”

“Oh- Really?”

“Yes. It was quite evident that you care for them, especially when Gabriel started screaming. You almost immediately took the lead and obviously got him the care he needed. Unfortunately, because they’re farmies, there’s more red tape to get through when it comes to ownership.” Beside all that, Bevell had been unreasonably against Dean taking ownership of the two and put in bad reviews, something Mick decided Dean  _ didn’t _ need to know. He hardly understood  _ why _ she’d even decided to hold a personal vendetta against the Winchesters.

“Oh, uh- Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it. Now- Moving on,” Mick had to get himself back on track. He was here for a reason. “You mentioned they had some phobias and experience flashback episodes. Can you describe those for me and perhaps when the last episode for each was?”

“Describe the phobias or the episodes?”

“Both, please.”

“Uh, well, Castiel’s afraid of pretty much any body of water. Gabriel doesn’t let people touch his wings, but for some reason, he was okay with me touching his new wings, so maybe he’s getting better with it? I don’t know but anyway, they both actually had episodes last night. They’d gotten really messy and I needed to clean them up and since it was late and Castiel was shivering, we agreed to try a bath. He was pretty much okay until the water touched him and it set him off into an episode. It didn’t last as long as the other one he’s had with me and he seemed pretty much okay after it, just really quiet and subdued. Gabriel, though. Um, I accidentally touched his wings, which set him off, but for some reason his episode lasted hours. I have no clue why, and he ended up with nightmares, which isn’t unusual for either, but these had him so worked up that he was throwing up. That’s when we figured out that he was okay with me touching the new wings.”

Davies nodded as he scribbled some notes. “And how have they been doing today?”

“Well, Castiel’s a little quieter than usual, but he’s been mostly okay. Gabriel’s been tired since the nightmares woke him up and he must not have slept well afterwards, but after he took a nap he’s been energetic.”

“How has Gabriel’s behavior changed since he sprouted the new wings? Can you tell me how he was before and after?”

“At first, when I started watching them, he would bounce between just normal energy and completely exhausted. He didn’t speak much because he had a pretty sore throat and his fever made him pretty miserable. Eventually, he just ended up really tired and then he started the pain and the fever reducer meds he was on were making him really tired, so he ended up sleeping most of the time. After he sprouted the wings, it took him a day or two but he’s really bouncy and energetic now. He eats a lot more and is rougher with his play. I’ve had to tell him to calm down a few times, when he gets too rough with Castiel, since Cas is so much smaller than he is. Oh, he’s also grown a bit, too. I’ll have to take him to get new clothes soon.”

“Okay, and what about Castiel?”

“Cas… His behavior hasn’t changed much. He doesn’t talk, obviously, but he refused to say anything to me when I started watching them. He would cry for Sam since he didn’t like being away from him, but that was it. After a little while, he started talking to me and he has his days where he’s more verbal than others. He’s spent a lot of time playing with me or on his own, since Gabriel was almost always asleep, but he’s a lot happier now that he has Gabriel to play with. Sam had a corner of his living room full of pillows and soft stuff and I’ve been working on making one so they can play without risking getting hurt.”

Davies nodded as he wrote. “Play corners are a good idea, they can have toys and bedding right there so they’re occupied without too much disruption.”

Dean shrugged. “I’m not too worried about disruption. I mean, three weeks ago, I never thought I’d be housing my brother’s pet angels, much less be applying for ownership for them. I didn’t even know they were traumatized until the morning after Sammy’s crash so I’m just taking it all in stride and trying to help them as best I can. You have no idea what they’ve been through.” Neither did Dean. Nobody knew the full extent, save for those two little angels, who were currently coloring in the coloring books they’d pulled out of Dean’s backpack. Neither seemed very interested in the conversation, nor were they very inclined to share about their experiences.

Mick wrote this down and circled it, making a mental note to mention this to his superiors. Many angel owners were looking for a quiet pet they could cuddle with and though angels could be trained to be quiet, it was natural for them to chirp and whistle like birds and they could pick up English and other human languages fairly easily. Knowing that Dean didn’t care about disruption and was willing to work with it definitely would help his chances in approval. Just as he was about to ask another question, his phone rang.

He checked it and looked up at Dean. “I need to answer this, do you mind-?”

“No, go ahead,” Dean waved him off. He nodded and pressed the device to his ear.

“Davies,” He greeted as he stood up and stepped outside, just at the door where Dean could see him. He’d left his coffee and folder so it was a near guarantee that he wasn’t going to just leave with no warning.

Dean had been on too many dates where the girl had left after getting a “phone call”.

With a glance to make sure that Davies was still outside, Dean ordered the angels to stay put then got up and bought a few croissants and a chocolate chip cookie for the angels to split. He returned just as Davies was hanging up outside and quickly broke the cookie in half and tore a croissant in pieces for Castiel and Gabriel to eat. Naturally, they went for the cookie first.

Davies got back just as Gabriel grabbed his cookie half and before either could say anything, Casiel crawled onto Dean’s lap and started shoving his hand near Dean’s face.

“What? What?” Dean leaned back and held the fledgling still to see him waving a cookie piece at the man, wings fluttering. “Is that for me?” Castiel nodded and Dean accepted the cookie. He returned to his seat once Dean ate it. “Sorry,” He murmured to Davies, who was arranging his papers.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Dean noticed the Brit was hiding a grin. “That phone call was from my superiors. They knew I was meeting with you and asked that I tell you that you’ve been approved for ownership.”

“Wait, really?”

“We’re gonna stay with Dean?” Gabriel spoke up, whiskey eyes wide.

“You are,” Mick told the fledgling. A grin broke on Castiel’s face and he bounced a bit as Gabriel stared down at his remaining cookie, carefully broke a piece from the uneaten side, and leaned over the table as he slid the piece over to Davies, who accepted it. “Thank you very much,” He told the fledgling, who grinned happily at him and bit his remaining cookie.

“So, they’re mine?” Dean asked.

“That’s right. You should be getting official ownership transfer papers in the mail in a few days. The official decision was only made about an hour ago, so I would expect it to take at least three days for the papers to arrive.”

“Alright, uh… What will I do after that?”

“Well, due to the process, you should already be in the system as their owner so you won’t need to contact anyone from the office to get the papers officially in the system. Now, relating to their specific case, have you thought about applying for disability benefits?” 

“I’ve heard of disability but we only talked about it once when they were still Sam’s, before we heard about them being taken away. What all does disability do and how would I even apply? Would they even qualify?”

“Well, first off, I’m sure Gabriel would qualify and Castiel should as well. Disability will prevent them from having to be leashed. You wouldn’t have to put a collar on them, but it is recommended that you give them some kind of necklace for identification. The disability office, after approval, would send you a metal adjustable bracelet with their specific type of disability and some information inscribed. They’ll need to wear the bracelets whenever they leave the apartment once they hit collar age, but I would recommend having them wear the bracelet as soon as possible so they’re used to it. It’s not a very large or heavy bracelet, but it can still bother them when it’s on and they aren’t used to it.”

“What do these bracelets look like?” Dean asked and Mick pulled his phone out. After a few seconds, he set it down and spun it around. 

“This is a bracelet for one of my angels, an epileptic. As you can see, her name and mine are right here, my address is here, and the disability is here.” Sure enough, the silver was inscribed with  _ Rachel, Michael Davies, 3248 Silverback Road, Jamestown, CO _ along with a phone number and small carving of a winged person with squiggly lines coming from the head with  _ Epilepsy _ underneath. “The contact information is so that, in case she has a seizure when she’s alone, which isn’t likely, anybody could call me and let me know. It also helps my other angels to call me. They know what to do by now, but sometimes they panic or need some reassurance.”

“How many do you have?” 

“Three. It’s customary to buy an angel in at least pairs. This prevents them from getting lonely and they have a preening buddy so their feathers stay in order.”

“Okay, so I’ve seen silver bracelets before, but what does a blue bracelet on an angel mean?”

“Blue? It’s becoming the universal color for angels in rehab, since rehabilitation clinics are starting to be more widespread. Where have you seen this before?”

“Someone I know rehabilitates angels and I’d seen some of them with the blue bracelets, it just never occurred to me to ask what they were for.”

“Ah. Blue’s just becoming the rehab color, that’s all.”

Dean sat back and Mick put his phone away. “Now, along with the bracelets and not having to leash them, disability will give you a monetary bonus.”

“Really? Why?” 

Mick was slightly confused by this. He’d been expecting Dean to ask how much the bonus was, not why. “It can act as an incentive for the more…  _ Less willing _ owners to keep the angels and ensure they have a home. Almost a preventative action to keep disabled angels off the streets, where they would almost definitely starve due to the competition for food. It also helps owners with less money take care of the angel, maybe try to find them therapy. Disability can be unexpected, especially if the angel suffers an injury they can’t heal from, like a particularly bad break to their wings. It can cause unexpected expenses that some owners can’t afford, and the bonus helps with that.”

Dean nodded thoughtfully. “How much is it then?”

_ There it is _ . “On average, it is about $500 per angel per month, but it can deviate depending on the disability and age of the angel.”

Dean was very visibly taken aback by that. “That’s- That’s a lot. That’d be… Really helpful, to be honest.”

“That  _ is _ the goal of the benefit.”

“Well, yeah, but I was texting Sam earlier about medical costs and how he’ll have to go to PT-”

“Sammy?” Castiel perked up at the mention of his now-former owner, as did Gabriel, and Mick was stunned to hear the little one speak.

“Can we go see Sammy?” This was Gabriel, who was now wriggling in his seat, feathers fluffing up.

“Yes, we can go see Sam after we finish up here.”

Both angels gave excited chirps and Dean turned back to face Mick with a bashful grin. “Sorry about that.”

“No, don’t be. It was a surprise to hear Castiel.”

“Yeah, he does that sometimes. The only time he’ll really talk in public, especially near people he doesn’t know, it’ll probably be about Sam. They both really love being with him.”

Mick’s mouth twisted regretfully. “I hate to take them from him, but it’s better that they’re going to you than some stranger. They need people they know.”

“I’ve noticed that. I’ve been told that they refuse to be separated too.”

“How’m I s’posed to protec’ Cas if ‘m not with ‘im?” Gabriel chimed in suddenly. His words caused both adults to look at him.

“What’s that about protecting Castiel?” Mick asked.

“I promised I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him, before he was born. How’m I supposed to make sure he’s safe if I’m not with him?”

Castiel leaned over and tapped the arch of Gabriel’s wing twice, the limb twitching slightly. Gabriel returned the tap on Castiel’s shoulder and Dean frowned when, for some reason, he found the gesture familiar. Quickly, he searched his memory to find that he’d seen it between the two before- At the hospital with Dr. Jennings, multiple times at the garage, in the hospital with Sam, when they were preening just last night. What did it mean?

Receiving no answer from the surprised humans, Gabriel gave a decisive nod and sat back down, taking a piece of the torn-up croissant with him.

“Well. Didn’t expect that,” Dean broke the silence between the two first.

“Angels are surprising little things. Oh, by the way,” a thought suddenly came to Mick. “If you want more information about archangels, I would recommend trying to contact Charles Shurley. I know he somehow has three archangels, they’re all adults, so he would have information.”

“The CEO of AngeliCo?” At Mick’s affirming nod, Dean frowned. “Sam had a meeting with him the day of his crash. He was coming home when it happened.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. Hey, why did you say you wanted me to have Cas and Gabe so bad?”

“They obviously liked you and you were obviously caring for them as best you could.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if I can give them the best care they could get. I mean, I’ve set both of them into flashback episodes by accident and right now, they’re coming with me to work then hanging out either in the locker room or with my boss.” Stupid,  _ stupid _ Dean. Davies could easily take them away from him, why was he saying this?

“Except that they liked you. They knew you and seemed as happy as they could be, considering the circumstances. You asked us to wait while you got Gabriel comfortable before you spoke to us for real, I’ve had some visits where the owner wouldn’t have done that, they would have just told the angel to suck it up and wait. Besides, angels  _ are _ very near human. We try to give them as much comfort as we currently can.”

“Are- Is APS one of those groups that’s pro- angel rights?”

“There’s a group of us. The organization as a whole? No, it’s closer to animal control, but there are a number of those of us working there that are trying for angel rights. We have to be careful, though, to not risk associating the APS with pro-rights advocates and losing our jobs.”

Dean nodded thoughtfully as he pet Castiel’s head. In the following silence, Mick turned his wrist to check the time.

“Well, you best be off if you want to see Sam before visiting hours are over. Mr. Winchester, it was nice to see you again. Gabriel, Castiel, it was good to officially meet you.”

“Good t’ meet you too,” Gabriel replied then looked up at Dean as though he were asking if that was the correct response.

Dean and Davies shook hands then the Brit left, throwing out his coffee cup on the way. After a few minutes of getting the angels to eat the rest of the torn-up croissant and wrapping the other croissant for Sam to have, Dean herded the two to his car, letting both walk for once- but holding their hands  _ very _ securely so they didn’t end up running off - which was unlikely- or being taken- which was more likely, especially for six-winged Gabriel.

Skipping going home, Dean drove straight to the hospital and walked the now-familiar route to Sam’s room, carrying both angels with Gabriel on his shoulders. The young archangel was suddenly growing fairly quickly since he’d sprouted the other four wings and was starting to get a bit too heavy for Dean to carry him on his hip all the time with just one arm. In the hospital, though, he was unwilling to let him walk on his own. He had no clue how many people would marvel at the six golden wings and would try to touch them-

“Mommy! Mommy, look! That angel’s got six wings!” Speaking of, some child with a red band around his wrist tugged on his mother’s hand, pointing at Gabriel. Said archangel, uncomfortable with the sudden attention, hunched over Dean’s head, fingers laced in his hair, wings shifting to shield his body which only caused the kid to call more attention to him. Dean patted Gabriel’s leg and Castiel reached up from his spot on Dean’s hip to tap his brother’s foot twice- what was it with that two-tap thing?

Thankfully, this kid’s mom didn’t ask Dean to stop and he managed to get to the elevator without much more trouble. The elevator, however, wasn’t empty and began to fill up and Dean silently cursed Sam’s doctors for putting him on one of the highest floors.

Some of the people in the elevator were unabashedly staring at Dean with his angels and Castiel, at an angle where he could see them, hid his face in Dean’s shirt. The man pet his wings and held him a little tighter as he glared at the people- who then looked away but the moment Dean returned his gaze to the now-trembling Castiel, they immediately started staring again.

“Why does that one have six wings?” One man asked, just as the elevator got to Dean’s floor.

“Cause he does,” Dean replied gruffly as he got out. “Look up archangels if you’re really that interested.”

Thankful for the escape, Dean hurried to Sam’s room. He could feel Castiel shaking and Gabriel was still hunched over and holding just a little too tight on Dean’s hair. He wasn’t going to say anything, though, and desperately hoped Sam wouldn’t have that much of a reaction- yes, six wings was unusual but at least Gabriel wasn’t sick or in pain anymore.

Sam’s room was empty when Dean went in and the man himself was absorbed in a sudoku game on a tablet, using a stylus in his left hand with his right arm- the now useless one and ironically, the one arm Bart had (Dean had no clue why this thought sprung into his mind)- in a sling.

“Sammy!” Castiel squealed, struggling to get out of Dean’s arms. Sam looked up and a huge grin blossomed over his face when he saw Dean and his angels. He set the tablet to the side and held out his good arm for Dean to set Castiel down and snuggled the little one close. “Hi Sammy.”

“Hi, Cas,” Sam replied. “You have your words today?”

“Mhmm,”

“He’s not said much all day,” Dean chimed in as he wrangled the still curled up Gabriel from his shoulders- the archangel must have been more shaken up from the unwanted attention than Dean had thought. “You were saving them up, huh?”

Smiling bashfully, Castiel nodded.

“So we figured out what’s been wrong with Gabriel,” Dean started. Sam looked up from Castiel.

“What?”

“Well, you know how he was on fever-reducing meds that made him really tired last time we saw you?”

“Of course,”

“Well, the day after we saw you, he woke up screaming in pain. This went on a few days-” Dean left out the part about the bruising and redness- “-And I eventually took him to Ellen’s then Benny’s. One of Benny’s angels, Bartholomew, did something and during the meeting with APS-”

“Yeah, how did that go?”

“I’ll explain in a sec. During that, he started screaming again and I took him to Ellen’s, where he ended up sprouting four more wings.”

“ _ What!? _ ”

“Yeah-”

“He’s an  _ archangel _ ??”

“You know about them?”

“Yeah, in my meeting with Mr. Shurley, he had two that were basically acting as assistants. But  _ Gabriel’s _ an  _ archangel _ ?”

“Yeah, see?” Dean finally managed to get Gabriel off his shoulders and spun him so he was facing Dean, back to Sam. His six wings, all folded very tightly, were in plain sight now. Once Sam nodded, Dean tucked the archangel close to him, scratching his hair for a few seconds then moving to one of the third set of wings, relishing the huge shudder that went through him but only when a quiet purr started. “He’s also apparently okay with me petting the new wings. Still a hard no on the biggest ones, I’m thinking it’s because they were the ones that were striped and damaged.”

Gabriel nodded mutely against Dean.

“Okay, that’s why then. Castiel’s allowed to touch them, but that’s not really new. Gabe, will you let Sam touch your new wings really fast?”

Gabriel nodded again and twisted in Dean’s arms to reach for Sam. Castiel squirmed so he was on the sling side, sitting up now, and Dean set the archangel down. Once he was comfortable, Sam hesitantly moved to pet a middle wing and his eyes widened when it involuntarily shot up to press against his hand.

“O-oh. Oh, wow,” He mumbled as his fingers moved through the soft down. It was even softer than Castiel’s feathers, since it was so much newer and finer.

“He thinks he’s not supposed to like it,” Dean murmured as he sat down.

“ ‘M not,” Gabriel supplied through the purr that was now very loud. “They said ‘m not. Dunno why.”

“Well, if you like it, you’re probably supposed to,” Sam countered.

“Liked mint, see how that went,” The golden angel returned. Sam and Dean shared confused glances. Mint? Castiel, however, looked down at his feet, a strange melancholy stealing over him. Well, strange to the humans.

The dark-winged fledgling knew all about his brother’s experiences with the fragrant leaves.

Silence stole over the group as Gabriel relaxed against Sam, eyes closing at the bliss he felt. For once, he was completely at ease with someone touching his wings and actually welcomed the feeling- it made him feel safe and comforted, something he hadn’t truly felt since he’d been taken from his mother. Not without some other emotion trying to force its way in.

“So how did the APS meeting go?” Sam asked softly, remembering that he’d asked earlier.

“It was mostly okay until Gabriel started screaming. I actually just had another meeting with the APS guy- remember the woman that we saw the first time?”

“Yeah?”

“So apparently, she’s been taken off our case for some reason and the other guy that showed up Sunday is the only guy working our case now. Anyway, I just left a meeting with him and guess what?”

“What?”

“They approved the application to take Gabriel and Castiel! They’re letting me keep them!”

“Really?”

“Yeah!”

“Awesome!”

“Will we get to see you still?” Gabriel asked through his purrs.

“Of course,” Sam replied. “I love seeing you guys.”

Castiel hummed and Dean finally thought to see what he was doing. The black-haired little fledgling was still sitting up and was playing with Sam’s fingers.

“Do you feel that?” Dean asked and Sam looked to see what he was talking about.

“Not really. They’ve got me on some really strong pain meds, the third surgery was a few days ago.”

“What third surgery? What were the other two?”

“The first one was just after the crash, the second was when they were trying to fix my shoulder and figured out how damaged it was, and the third was them trying to fix some muscle and seeing if they could fix some of the nerve to give me back some feeling in my arm.”

Dean frowned. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You were busy,” Sam shrugged with his good arm. “I was gonna tell you at some point.”

“Why didn’t you text me that you were getting surgery? I would have come over.”

“Don’t fight,” Castiel whimpered, squirming.

“I’m sorry,” Sam replied. “We’ll stop.”

“So, another thing the APS guy told me- His name is Mick Davies by the way- He suggested that I apply for disability for them.”

“Disability?”

“Gives benefits and stuff. Angels that qualify don’t have to be leashed or collared, they just have to wear this silver bracelet. Apparently there’s some money bonus too, which I was not expecting.”

“What do you have to do to apply?”

Dean shrugged “No idea, I haven’t looked yet. Was going to after I get these guys to bed.”

Sam nodded. “How’ve they been for you?”

“Well, Gabriel’s gotten a lot more energetic and rambunctious. He somehow managed to get on top of my fridge a few days ago and then they were both a mess so I had to clean them up. Hey, how often does he have nightmares that make him throw up?”

Sam frowned. “Not horribly often. Usually after a bad flashback and you can tell when it happens cause he wakes up and doesn’t say anything then when he does start talking, he works himself up so much that he throws up. Why, did he have one?”

“Hey, after a couple-hours long flashback. How often does he get nightmares in general?”

Sam took a few minutes to consider this. “When he’s somewhere he’s never been, he’ll typically be fine for a few days then they’ll start up again. Typically, he’ll have nightmares or dreams that make him twitch but don’t wake him up, then he doesn’t remember them in the morning. The ones that do wake him up, you can tell how bad they are by how much he talks after he wakes up. If he’s almost immediately muttering under his breath, then he should be okay. If he’s completely silent, it was a really bad one and he’ll probably end up getting real worked up about it.”

Dean hummed slightly in acknowledgment. “He’s not really had any nightmares with me till last night but that could have been because of the meds, must have knocked him out so he didn’t have any.”

A sharp squeal broke through their conversation and Sam and Dean both immediately turned their attention to Gabriel, who was hunched with his back arched and wings flared strangely.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked.

“I must have hit one of the bad wings when I was petting him,” Sam mumbled as he pulled his hand away from the fledgling’s back. “I’m sorry Gabe,”

“S’okay,” Gabriel muttered as he shook his wings out and folded them along his back then crawled over to Castiel, who tapped him twice on the shoulder. Dean frowned at the motion, still questioning it but deciding to ask later. It wasn’t the time for that.

A knock came on the door and a nurse poked her head in.

“Visiting hours are over,” She told Dean gently. “Sam, it’s time for meds.”

“Great,” Sam grimaced. “I’ll see you Dean,” He ruffled both angels’ hair as Dean picked them up, settling Castiel on his shoulders this time and keeping both hands on Gabriel, who clung to his shirt. “Is he getting bigger?”

“Yeah. I’ll have to take him for new clothes soon, he’s getting close to outgrowing these.”

“About time, he’s not needed new clothes for a couple months. Castiel keeps outgrowing his, though, but those are new so he should be okay for a while.”

“Alright, thanks. I’ll see you, Sammy. You text me if you have any more surgeries?”

“I will,” Sam promised, rolling his eyes. See you, Dean. See you guys,” He waved and Gabriel and Castiel, who both waved back at him. Dean left, then, so he could get out of the nurse’s way. She was waiting patiently by the door, but Dean didn’t want to push that.

After making it through another awkward elevator ride full of staring adults and curious kids, Dean hurried back to his car, ready to get the angels home and get them to bed after feeding them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have officially hit over 100,000 words! This is actually the *most* I've written for one work!
> 
> What did you think about the chapter? Please comment! I love seeing your feedback!
> 
> So, fun fact- I don't look up street names in the cities I have my stories take place in, so I have no clue if these addresses actually exist. If they do, cool! If not, fine.


	16. Chapter 16

Dean woke up and immediately regretted it. He didn't have any alarms going off today, thankfully, but he had two living alarm clocks that were bound to wake up soon and beg for food and the pounding in his head did not bode well for the day. 

In the four days since he'd been approved for ownership, Dean had sent in paperwork for disability applications, sent an email to the AngeliCo CEO per Mick's advice, visited Sam again, went to Benny's to update them on Gabriel's condition- although it was busy so Benny couldn't talk and Joshua had promised to pass on the news-, and had finished the play corner. He'd planned on going shopping today, to get Gabriel new clothes and maybe sweets- he felt like he had to cater to the pair's collective sweet tooth, they always looked so happy when they got sugar. 

But waking up to a migraine caused those plans to screech to a halt. He didn't get migraines much, but when he did, they knocked him flat on his ass. He was just glad it hadn't happened on a work day- he couldn't afford to call off another day, not for a while. 

He slung his arm over his eyes and wondered if he'd closed the blinds last night. With the cords tied up, he couldn't ask the angels to do it and he didn't know if he'd be able to get up. Migraines always made him dizzy and moving made him nauseous. 

"Bean?" Thank  _ God _ the angels were quiet in the morning. Even so, Castiel's voice sent waves of pain through him. "You 'wake?"

"Yeah, 'm up," Dean groaned in response, wishing for the first time that he hadn't offered to take them. Then he wouldn't have had to say anything and could wallow away in his apartment. Then, at the thought, guilt pierced him. The angels needed him and they didn't deserve Dean wishing he hadn't taken them, not even when he had a migraine. "You need 'nything?"

Castiel didn't reply at first and Dean thought he'd used up all his words for the morning- Dean tended to think of Castiel's speaking as a limited number of words he could use at a given time that recharged over time. Sometimes he wouldn't have ay words and that was when he's as completely silent, sometime he had one or two and he'd be able to punctuate his hand motions with small words for clarity or would slur and drop syllables, and sometimes he'd have more and be able to talk just fine until he hit a wall and fell silent again. 

"You 'kay?"

"I will be."

"Not okay now?"

"Just a migraine. I'll be better in a bit, I just don't feel good right now."

Dean felt some rustling near his arm and on his chest. Gabriel must have moved. 

"Are we able to help?" The archangel asked softly, having picked up some cues from Dean and Castiel both talking quietly. "Need anything?"

Dean moved his arm and pried his eyes open. Vision blurry, he could just make out the shapes of the two angels staring at him. He thought Castiel's head was tilted. 

"Don't know if you can reach it."

"What do you need?" Gabriel urged. Dean sighed. Maybe this could help. 

"In the bathroom cabinet above the sink, there's a green pill bottle that says Excedrin. It should be on the top shelf."

Both angels left, one of them tapping his leg twice. Dean didn't have the energy to wonder what it meant. There was rattling and faint chirping and at some point, they came back. Dean had no clue how long it had been- he'd dozed off. 

"Bean," Castiel mumbled, bringing him back to wakefulness. "Can sit up?"

Evidently, he was on the two to three words at a time limit. 

Dean groaned and pushed himself up to lean against the wall, not entirely up but more vertical than he had been- and had to stop multiple times, nausea swirling inside him. 

"We couldn't get the bottle open," Gabriel sat on his lap and held the green-lidded pill bottle up to him. "We got the water though."

Dean opened the bottle after a bit of fumbling- migraines made him shaky- and poured out two. He accepted an open water bottle from Castiel and tipped it back, taking the pills. While he did so, Gabriel recapped the bottle and set it to the side. Castiel took the water bottle and put it on the table next to the futon then pushed something into Dean's hands. 

"Eat," he whispered. 

"Guys, I don't think I can. Migraines make me feel really sick-"

"Please?" This was Gabriel and dammit, Dean could  _ hear _ him using those damned puppy eyes. 

"Alright. What is it?" He hadn't opened his eyes. 

"Applesauce. Open."

Dean lifted the applesauce pouch to his mouth, Gabriel helping, and sucked the applesauce out, feeling almost like a child. Once it was empty, it was taken from his hands. 

"Go back to sleep," Gabriel whispered. "We'll be okay."

Lacking the energy to argue, Dean obeyed and someone pulled a blanket over his shoulder. He felt little fingers running through his hair and almost protested. 

"You always do this for us," Gabriel explained. It must have been him. 

"Feels good. Thanks guys,"

"You helped us, we help you."

"Sleep," This was Castiel and Dean didn't find it too difficult to obey. Gabriel petting him (that was weird) was surprisingly relaxing. 

He woke up later, groggy and somewhat woozy, but mostly pain free. Definitely not 100% and he would probably fall over if he tried to stand, but it was better. The pounding in his head had lightened to a dull ache and he felt like he could think without his head exploding.

He heard soft voices coming from the bedroom. He thought at first that it was just the angels but neither of them had a voice that deep- Was there someone else in the apartment?

Alarm flew through him. Had the angels let some stranger inside? He flung the blanket off and swung his legs over the side of the futon with the intent of figuring it out, but when he stood, he almost fell over, black spots dancing in his vision. Along with that, his headache came back, pounding against his brain with a vengeance and he sunk back down with a groan, cradling his head in his hands. The voices stopped and footsteps hurried out of the room.

“Dean, look up at me,” That deep voice- who was that?- was right in front of him. With a groan, Dean forced his eyes open but didn’t move his head. He felt like he would throw up if he moved. “Dean,”

“Can’t,” He forced himself to say. “Gonna puke ‘f I do.”

“Alright. Drink some Gatorade then.”

Dean let his eyes slip closed as a bottle of Gatorade was pressed to his lips. Before he knew it and not by his own volition, his head was tipping back a bit to drink. He only managed to swallow a few mouthfuls before pushing the bottle away.

“Who- Who’s’it?” He groaned.

“It’s Benny, Dean. Lie down, brother, try to fall back asleep. I’ll give you more Excedrin next time you wake up.”

“Benny? Why?”

“Your angels called me. Go to sleep, you know it’s how you deal with migraines best.”

Benny’s voice was soothing. He always had been. Dean had always thought it was because of his accent. His friend did always have a kind of motherly touch, this was evident in his interactions with his angels, but now it was turned on him and Dean found it somewhat disorienting. Of course, this wasn’t the first time he’d showed up when Dean was having a migraine, but usually it was because of a pain-laced phone call that Dean slurred out his cry for help. How did the angels even figure out how to work his phone in the first place?

“ ‘M sleepy Bean,” Castiel crawled into Dean’s arms- When did he lie down?- and snuggled up to his chest. Dean combed a hand through his feathers and shifted to bury his nose in the little one’s hair. He felt Benny putting an earbud in his ear and a quiet mix of sounds started playing. It was from some app called Relax Melodies and they’d managed to find a mix that helped- although Dean rarely used it, mostly because he shunned his phone when it came to migraines. With a warm blanket pulled over him Dean was cushioned in comfort and it was not hard to fall back asleep.

The third time he woke up was much better. He felt a lot better and, finally, didn’t feel like he would throw up. He was comfortable though, and didn’t want to move. Castiel was still cuddled in his arms and he could tell without opening his eyes that the fledgling was asleep. He shifted his hand to comb his fingers through the dark downy fluff and smiled faintly as Castiel shifted and mumbled a little. He could still hear the Relax Melodies playing and the mix of crickets, rain sounds, campfire, mini-frogs and grandfather clock was soothing and was starting to lull Dean back to sleep.

“Dean, are you awake?” Just as he was drifting, Benny’s rumbling voice carried softly across the gentle silence of the room. 

“Not really,” Dean replied hoarsely and quietly. “Thinkin’ ‘m gonna fall back ‘sleep.”

“How do you feel? Think you can choke down a little somethin’’ to eat?”

“Mm, maybe something light.”

“Alright. Can you take these to him? Dean, you’ll need to sit up.”

“Cas is asleep on me.”

“No ‘m not,” Said fledgling yawned at that moment. 

“Sure, kiddo. You just wake up?” Somehow, Dean managed to muster up the energy to tease Castiel, just a little.

“No, I been up.” This was obviously false because Castiel snuggled up against Dean more and he had that fuzzy sound to his voice that betrayed the truth- although that was a common sound because he rarely spoke. “You gotta eat,”

“I will,”

The futon shifted as, presumably- Dean hadn’t opened his eyes yet with his face buried in Castiel’s hair- Gabriel crawled up. 

“Benny told me to give these to you,” He murmured. Dean finally made the effort to move his head and open his eyes. Gabriel was holding an open sleeve of saltines.

“Alright. Hold on.”

“Broth’s almost ready, Dean, then you can get some flavor.” Benny called over. Called would be the wrong word, it implied that his voice was raised. No, it was just the timbre of his voice that carried across the apartment easily. 

Dean didn’t reply, instead focusing on carefully pushing himself upright. He was still shaky and absolutely  _ exhausted _ . When he was up enough, Gabriel snuggled up next to him and sat the saltines on his lap. He took one and nibbled on a corner. He didn’t really want to eat but knew he’d feel like shit later if he didn’t. And he needed  _ less _ shit, not more.

Benny soon came over with a mug. He sat next to Dean and carefully handed it to him, making sure he had a good hold on it before letting go.

“How you feeling, brother?” He asked.

“Shaky. Exhausted. Usual after stuff.”

“No pain? No nausea?”

“Not right now.”

“Good. You steady enough to drink the broth?”

“Probably not,” Dean instead dipped his cracker into the warm soup and let it soak a bit before taking another bite. It was better. More flavor at least, which is usually what had Benny making broth after migraines. It was a way to get Dean to eat when he didn’t want to and he could stomach it fairly easily. “Still feel like shit.”

“It’ll get better, it always does.”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed and only spoke again after a long silence. “How’d you even get here?”

“Your angels called me at around 10. They sounded scared, said you weren’t feeling good. Considering the fact that they called and you only admit to feeling bad when you’re deathly sick or have a migraine, I came over.”

“What time’s it now?”

About… 8 ish.”

“You’ve been away from the restaurant this whole time? Benny, man, I’m not worth it-”

“Of course you are. And besides, I have staff for a reason and Bart was in today, they were fine. Gabriel wouldn’t have called if you were fine and he sounded real worried. Elizabeth’s been pushing me to take a day off anyway, so it worked out.”

Dean couldn’t even find the energy to counter this. “Okay.”

“You just eat and go back to sleep. Judging by the looks of ‘em, it’s getting close to the angels’ bedtime-”

“No ‘t’s not!” Gabriel tried to protest, as though he hadn’t been nodding sleepily. Castiel shook his head in agreement, looking marginally more energized.

“Well, unless you two are weird, seasonal molt’s coming up and you’re both old enough to go through it this year. Adina’s already starting losing feathers so you’re probably getting really tired, huh? Losing energy? Means you need to sleep. Molt’s tiring for angels.”

“Wait, wait. Molt?”

“Yeah, angels go through multiple seasonal molts. A spring one where they lose some winter feathers and a summer one where they shed the rest. Then in winter, they might drop a few particularly ragged ones but they regrow them fairly quick.”

“What’s it like for them? Gabriel, didn’t you say that you guys don’t molt like birds?”

Gabriel shrugged with a  _ how should I know  _ look.

“Their wings will be really itchy and they’ll be more tired than usual. Not extremely, they’ll just nap more and fall asleep earlier. They might get moody or twitchy, It kind of depends on the angel. The top floor tends to get so full of feathers that I send my group outside for a few hours a day so they can flap around and shed.”

“Is there any way to make it less…  _ Unpleasant _ for them?”

Benny shrugged. “Not really. You can pet their wings, it’ll stimulate the feathers falling out, but the itch is from new ones growing in. It’s only about a day per feather but it’s a bunch of feathers stretched out through a few weeks so it can get pretty irritating. I don’t think either of them is old enough to do a full molt- Castiel, have you molted before?”

He shook his head no.

“Well, then you’re probably going to do a full molt. First times tend to be full. Sorry, buddy.”

Castiel shrugged. “Can’t do ‘nything ‘bout it.”

“What about Gabriel? He just grew new feathers.”

The drowsy archangel looked up and shuffled his smaller wings in agreement. The biggest were still- obviously. He probably lacked the muscle mass to move them much.

Benny looked conflicted. “That one I don’t know. I’ve never encountered an archangel before. Maybe he’ll only molt the big wings since the others haven’t existed as long.” This, of course, was incorrect but neither human knew that. “Then next year, he may go through the first molt with the new ones. I really don’t know.”

“Hmm. So basically just pet them and they’ll act like cats the rest of the time?”

“I’m not a cat,” Gabriel protested as he sleepily crawled into Dean’s lap. The human’s hand went automatically to the fledgling’s hair. “ ‘m ‘n angel.”

“We know, buddy,” Dean replied. “Go to sleep.”

“ ‘m not sleepy,” His words were punctuated by a huge yawn as his feathers fluffed slightly. It was a motion that Dean had noticed meant he was about to fall asleep. “ ‘m ‘wake.

“Sure you are,” Dean ruffled his hair a little. “You’re wide awake.”

“Mhmm,” He really wasn’t and, moments later, his breathing slowed and he drifted, his head lolling to the side as he relaxed.

Dean glanced up to find that Castiel was socked out on Benny’s lap, lying completely starfished- if starfish had six limbs. His wings were twitching- as usual- and feathers were fluffing unconsciously. Whacked by a sudden bout of exhaustion- more like reminded of his post-migraine exhaustion, Dean lifted one hand to rub at his eyes.

“Go to sleep, Dean,” Benny told him. “You need it. Gatorade will be on the table here and I’ll put the food away. I fed the angels so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Thanks, man, really,”

“I say it every time I come over for a migraine. It’s what I’m here for.”

“No, not just for today. All the information you’ve given me, helping me with the disability applications… All of it, from when I first got these guys, you’ve been a huge help. I doubt I could have done all of this without you.”

Benny shrugged, somewhat bashful. It was rare to receive praise from Dean but… He’d been changing ever since he started taking care of the angels. It was small, so far, but he was already more openly enthusiastic and caring, worrying more about Gabriel and Castiel’s comfort than his macho image. And, evidently, he was growing more open with other things. It was definitely a change, but it was quite welcome.

“Well… Maybe, in a few days, why don’t you come over to the restaurant? Seeing Gabriel and Castiel… It’s actually helping out a lot with a couple of the angels. Adina actually came down for a little bit yesterday after you left. She helped Josiah roll some utensils.”

“Really? That’s great!” 

“It’s the exposure to fledglings I think. Especially Gabriel, with how he was so sick when he met her but is doing so good now. They’re both what she needed, I think. She’s not going outside or changing her name tag yet and she’s still spending a lot of time in bed, but she is doing better. The new faces, little ones that aren’t admitted, it’s helping the others too. Eli’s been a bit lighter recently- did I tell you he’d been getting really down? He had fallen down the stairs and got a bit bruised up but it hit him harder emotionally. He says he used to be extremely graceful and he’s really quite young. I think he’s only about six. After your last visit, though, he’s been getting a little better. I caught him flapping a little bit earlier this morning, which was a serious surprise. I’ve hardly seen him with his wing open without me urging him.”

“Damn. Yeah, we’ll come over soon. It’s awesome that they’re improving.”

“Oh yeah. Becca’s been out flying with Josh and Bart more, I think she’s getting close to being ready to get released. I need to call Ellen and set up an appointment to make sure everything’s healing right.”

After a bit more urging, Benny managed to get Dean lying down again and helped situate the angels how Dean said they usually slept. Then, just as he was drifting off, Dean heard Benny in the kitchen, moving dishes and putting food away in the fridge.

Dean, Castiel, and Gabriel did end up going to Benny’s a few days later. Gabriel was in new clothes, bought that Sunday, and quite like a new t-shirt he’d gotten. Dean had to alter some of the shirts to accommodate the new wings- AngeliCo didn’t seem to make clothes for archangel, but he was usually able to leave the snaps that closed the shirt under wings undone except for the last one or two. It wasn’t great, but he was hoping to talk to the AngeliCo CEO soon- he’d actually replied to Dean’s email just before they got to Benny’s- and maybe he could suggest adding archangel-adaptable clothes to their list of products.

It had been cloudy when they walked in, with the promise of rain. True to Benny’s predictions, Castiel had started squirming uncomfortably that morning, feathers fluffed awkwardly as he wiggled. He’d ended up napping on the way to Benny’s which was a helpful reprieve to the growing persistent itch in his wings. They sat quickly and had gotten their food similarly fast- Benny had even supplied them with his Angel Special again.

He glanced out the window at the pouring rain. He was sitting across from Dean and Castiel, and next to Gabriel. Business was extremely slow due to the storm- they were among the only ones inside the restaurant. Dean and his angels had finished eating a while ago and would have left, but the rain had gone from a drizzle to dumping and Dean didn't want to run Castiel through the parking lot and risk him finding or stepping in puddles. He'd been doing good lately, with more semi-verbal days than not, and Dean didn't want to ruin that progress. So they stayed to wait out the storm. It would be easier on the young angel when it wasn't pouring. 

"Shouldn't Bart be back by now?" Dean asked. Benny had sent the angel out to run some errands before the rain had gotten bad. 

"He'll be back soon," Benny replied. "He's flown in storms before. He's strong."

Just then, there was a loud thud against the front wall of the restaurant, drawing a surprised squeal from someone, followed by an ear-splitting scream. All the humans ended up on the floor, hands clapped over their ears, but eventually Benny and Dean recovered enough to scramble to their feet and hurry to the door. Dimly, Dean was aware of a window shattering. 

The scream died as Dean and Benny, followed by Joshua and later Rebecca, pushed through the door. They stumbled to a halt as they came upon the sight. It was an angel that had crashed into the building, a sizable mark on the wall, and it was Bart-  _ oh God Bart _ . 

He was crumpled on the ground, partly on his side and partly on his stomach, hair plastered to his face and jaw locked. He was curled in a ball, wings splayed awkwardly. And a low howl, growing in volume, was emitting from his mouth, thankfully at a frequency that Dean didn't feel like his eardrums were about to burst. 

It only took Benny a few seconds to spring into action and he raced forward, splashing through a puddle as he dropped to his knees next to the angel.

"Joshua, get my phone and call Ellen. Tell her we've got a C and V. She knows what it means. Becca, get everyone upstairs. Gabriel and Castiel too, make sure they all stay calm. Any remaining customers will have to leave through the back door, if they argue tell them the owner said so. Do not let them leave through here. Have someone turn off the open sign and bring down a pillow. Go." Both angels nodded and dashed inside as Benny knelt down next to the wounded angel, who was now wailing with pain.

"Bart. Bart, look at me," He gently took hold of the angel's head, smoothing his wet hair from his face. "Bartholomew, open your eyes. Come on, look at me, brother."

After a moaning struggle, light blue eyes blinked halfway open. Bart was panting now, like he'd run a marathon, each breath coming with a whimper. He was crying, but it was hard to tell where tears stopped and rain began.

"You're going to be okay," Benny assured. "You'll be just fine. Ellen's on her way, she'll fix you right up, okay?" He then looked down and took hold of Bart's hand. "Here, relax your hand. You're hurting yourself." Sure enough, Bart had curled his hand into a fist so tight, his nails were piercing the skin, small beads of blood rolling down his palm and mixing with the rainwater. Benny slipped his hand into Bart's and squeezed it, the angel squeezing back. 

"Alright, I'm going to pick you up, okay? Dean will hold your wings, make sure they don't drag the ground. We're taking you inside so Ellen can take a look at you when she gets here." Gulping air, Bart nodded. "Don't hold your breath. You need to breathe. I'm gonna put one arm under your shoulders as best I can and the other under your knees, okay? Then I'm gonna pick you up and you'll need to put your arm around my neck. Ready?"

Bart nodded and released Benny's hand as the man shuffled into position. Bart slung his single arm around Benny's neck and, at Benny's look, Dean moved to support the angel's wings. 

"One, two, three," Benny counted then lifted the angel from the ground. Dean tried to move to lift the wings as well, but one flapped panickedly.

"Stop!" Bart wailed, hand tightening on Benny's shirt. He tucked his face into the man's neck, sobbing and Dean quit moving, tossing a scared look at Benny. The other man looked completely calm, cool as a cucumber. 

"Dean, go open the door. Bart, your wings might drag on the floor a bit. I'll do my best to hold you high enough that they don't. 

'A bit' was an understatement. Bart's wingspan, like every adult angel’s, was huge. Even with Benny holding him, at least a quarter of each wing would be on the ground. Dean didn't stop to think about this, though, and moved to prop the door open as Benny continued talking to the injured angel cradled in his arms. 

“Alright, redbird, let’s get moving.” He was saying as Dean came back. “Where does it hurt? Dean’s gonna fold your good wing, he’s just gotta know where not to touch.”

“Y-you haven’t called me r-redbird in- in a while,” Bart croaked, hardly able to be heard over the rain. 

“I know. This calls for it. Where do you hurt?”

“M-my entire right wing. I-I don’no w-where the- what happened to it. Left wing hurts too.” Dean noticed that his speech was gaspy, breathless, like he couldn’t drag enough air into his lungs.

“Is Dean able to fold them?”

“Can- Can try.”

Dean nodded and carefully took a feathered limb in hand, finding the joint and gently- oh so gently- folding the wing. It seemed that Bart was able to keep it held close to his body, as it fell back only a little. The other wing, the moment Dean moved it, a shiver ran through his body and Bart whimpered but didn’t say anything. Dean carefully lifted it so it was just off the ground.

“Can you hold it here?” He asked.

“I can- can’t move it. Just hu-hurts. Everything hurts.”

Dean pursed his lips then continued easing the wing up, ignoring, to the best of his ability, Bart’s pained whines. It was clear the wing was broken and even more obvious that Bart was holding back, disguising his pain. His eyes widened and he held back a choked sound. There was  _ bone _ visible, and the wing was  _ bleeding _ . Before he could say anything, Benny started moving and Dean scooted closer to Bart to support him better. The men shuffled the angel inside where they found tables pushed together and a single pillow on the tables. Joshua was gathering dishes left on another table and Becca was waiting for them anxiously.

Benny and Dean maneuvered Bart to the table and carefully laid him on his side. Dean set to gently, so gently, extending the wings, carefully unbending the joints. Despite his care, the angel still sobbed.

“Adina’s taking care of Gabriel and Castiel,” Becca told Dean. “They were worried at first but they’re being distracted.”

“Thanks,”

“Is everyone upstairs and calm?”

“Except for me and Josh, yeah.”

Joshua had by now, returned from the kitchen and was watching Bart concernedly. Both Rebecca and Joshua were, and they were both obviously disturbed as well. Bart was bitter and prickly, he could be downright unpleasant at times, but he’d always been caring and paternal to every angel that came through. He gave each of them individual care, made every one of them feel safe and wanted. He was always their strong wall, a shoulder to cry on. Very few had ever heard of him shedding even one tear, much less this helpless, agonized sobbing where he was nearly choking on his tears as he groped blindly for Benny’s hand. Benny pulled a chair over and sat next to Bart, combing a hand through his hair, holding his hand with the other.

“You’re okay, redbird,” Benny breathed. “You’ll be just fine.”

“Benny,” Dean murmured. The man patted his angel’s hand and got up, joining his friend. Dean gestured to the wings which were finally stretched out. Due to Bart’s crashing into the building on his dominant side- the side with his arm- he was more injured there and was lying awkwardly, almost on his stomach with no arm to support him. His injured wing, the right one, was on top because of this and Dean had found a towel to put in between the feathered appendages, preventing any more red blood from dripping onto uninjured cardinal feathers. Benny cringed at the sight of white bone piercing the skin near the first joint of the wing. Unable to do anything until Ellen got there, he returned to his seat and Dean found a chair elsewhere.

By the time Ellen arrived, Bart’s sobbing had died away- he’d become numb to the pain. Tears still crawled from his eyes, rolling sideways down his temple and into his hair, and his breathing was light, shallow. His mouth hung open as he drew in these nearly ineffective breaths and his eyelids fluttered in a battle to keep his eyes open, to keep looking at Benny. He was clearly struggling, his eyes glassy. Dean had stayed with them, despite Joshua and Rebecca being sent upstairs, and Benny stayed in Bart’s line of sight, holding his hand and combing through his hair. It was still damp- It hadn’t taken Ellen long to arrive. When the door opened, his fingers twitched, but he didn’t show any other sign of registering the noise. 

The woman threw her hood down and hurried to get a preliminary check of the angel’s injuries. She poked around, doing god-knows-what, and eventually backed off.

“We’re going to need to take him in. I’ll splint his wing enough to keep it somewhat till and Benny, you’ll need to come with me, but he’s got to get to the office  _ now _ .” There was a worried undertone to her voice that caught Dean off guard. It was just a broken wing, right? Yeah, it was particularly bad, but… That was it, right

Ellen started to splint the wing and Bart’s grip on Benny’s hand became marginal tighter- but only slightly. It was when she had to lift the wing that he really reacted, stiffening with a cry of pain then spasming with another as the movement aggravated his injury- then another and another until he was sobbing once more, unable to stop himself.

“Dean, in my bag, there’s a small baggie of dried mint. Get it for me.”

“You’re going to give him mint?” Benny asked in some alarm.

“Not much. But he needs to relax and he can’t if he’s still feeling this. I was hoping to not have to but he probably needs to float a bit. Hasn’t he been fairly resistant?”

“Yes, but… You know how I feel about the use of mint, Ellen. I’ve had to deal with too many addicted angels.”

“Wait, angels can get addicted to mint?” Somehow, in this chaos, Dean was remembering things Gabriel had said about mint, things that didn’t seem to make sense at the time. But with this new information…

“Yeah. It’s like a mix of catnip for cats and cocaine for humans for them. Depending on the angel, they could be addicted immediately or nt at all. It’s a weird blend because catnip isn’t addictive for cats but cocaine is addictive for humans,” Ellen told him shortly. “As far as I’ve heard, it’s impossible for them to overdose, but they can gain a dependency, like any other drug.  _ But _ , it’s a really good, fast-acting, near analgesic and in a pinch, we’ll use it and hope that one dose will last long enough to get to safer drugs that can be monitored. Benny, he tends to get dopey and sleepy, right?”

“Right. But it takes alot for it and I don’t want to use that much on him.”

“I’m only going to give him enough to have him drift a little. You don’t have any dependent angels right now, do you?”

“No-”

“Gabriel’s said some weird stuff about mint,” Dean cut in. “He doesn’t say much but at some point he said he’d liked mint and look where that got him. What do you think that points to?”

Benny and Ellen shared a look and their expressions made a sinking feeling appear in Dean’s stomach. _Oh_ _god no not that poor, sweet little baby_ -

“There’s a good chance,” Ellen answered slowly. He didn’t look like he was dealing with withdrawals when he was rescued from the farm and he’s had so many checkups since, even in the shelter, that it would have had to have been really early in his life.

Dean felt like he would puke.

“So, with that in mind, he probably shouldn’t come down for a while, so the air conditioning has enough time to filter out the smell. That’ll help and we don’t want to chance a reaction. Formerly addicted angels are particularly susceptible to falling back into the dependence, especially if they’re exposed to mint early on.” With this, Ellen took the small baggie from Dean’s hand, put a small pinch of the dried leaves on her palm and held it near Bart’s face. It took two more pinches for his sobs to slow and he shifted to sniff Ellen’s hand. His eyes slitted open, coming slightly more open a second later and Dean could see that his gaze was slowly- very slowly and it required a fourth pinch of mint- growing hazy and eventually, his eyes completely unfocused and he reached for Ellen’s hand- frowning just slightly when she moved away. He let his hand flop back down and his eyes fluttered shut later. He seemed much more relaxed and he looked to be completely limp and numb- he let Ellen finish immobilizing his wing without any more complaint. It was actually when Benny was carefully sliding him onto the folded-down seats of her SUV that a small whimper was heard and Benny was immediately apologizing. The man crawled in after the angel, taking his hand and stroking his hair, whispering comfortingly to him, though it was unclear if he was heard.

The drive was uncomfortably silent and seemed to take ages. Using the bluetooth in th car, Ellen called Ash and ordered him to set up an x-ray, casting materials, surgery supplies…

Benny wasn’t stupid. He knew that it would likely take surgery to fix Bart’s wing. Bone was sticking out of him, after all. It was pretty obvious. He also knew the injuries that could be caused by a break like this- but was ignoring it. He just had to believe Bart would be okay, he had to be okay…

The first surgery took hours. Benny lost count exactly how long it was that he was sitting in that waiting room, staring helplessly at his hands, hoping to  _ god _ that they weren’t too late that Bart would be okay. 

“Benny,”

His head shot up when Ellen called him softly.

“He’s sleeping right now. We had to splint his wing, he’s casted-” 

“What’s the full list of injuries? What’s wrong, tell me all of it.”

Ellen sighed heavily. She knew how attached Benny was to the one-armed angel. The two had been companions almost since Bart’s birth and Benny had found him when he was still in Louisiana.

“Compound fracture on the humerus,” She started. Her voice was soft, solemn- and Benny knew that what was coming wasn’t good. “Fractured his alula, bruised and scraped up along his arm and side- nothing that needed stitches, 3 broken ribs, and… And the air sac on his wings was collapsed.”

Benny sucked in a breath.

“If he’d hit any harder or at a different angle, there’s no guarantee he would have made it through the surgery. As it is, he’s in serious condition. He’s sleeping right now and we’ve got him on a ventilator to make sure he gets enough air to his lungs and good air sac- and we’re trying to reinflate the collapsed one. But with the way his wing bent, it’s probably stretched. There’s a good chance he won’t recover fully. Benny, you need to understand- He may not make it through tonight. Even if he does, there’s still a high chance he’ll decline. You know the mortality rate on injuries like these.”

“I know.” Benny sighed heavily. “Can I see him?”

Ellen nodded and led him back to the room Bart was in. He was lying n a strange position- not flat on his back but not on his side either. Surrounded by monitors and with a tube jammed down his throat, he looked small. He looked painfully, terrifyingly tiny. He was a little taller than the average angel, but right now that didn’t seem to matter.

Benny could hardly see the bright red feathers of his injured wing for all the bandages. He had multiple IV lines in his single arm and a glowing clip was on his finger, attached to the monitor tracking his heartbeat.

_ Beep… Beep… Beep… _

Benny swallowed. Bart had never been so injured before. Sure, he was disabled, but that didn’t mean he didn’t live a full, active life. 

He’d flown in storms before. Hell, he was an amazing flyer, he claimed to have even gotten close to a tornado once. How did this storm, one that didn’t seem too bad, injure him to this extent? What had happened that he’d lost control and crashed into the side of the building.

_ Had _ he lost control?

Benny sat in the chair Ellen brought in for him and scooted it to right next to Bart. He patted his forearm carefully, avoiding the numerous tubes sticking out of the angel.

“Please hold on, Bart,” He mumbled. “Please. I don’t- I don’t know what I could do without you. You’ve been around for so long-” He swiped his sleeve over his eyes. “You gotta make it through this, brother. You gotta.”

_ Beep… Beep… Beep…. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Bart honey...
> 
> I actually wasn't planning for this to happen quite so soon (It has been planned for a while) but then an idea crossed my mind and I couldn't resist. We will see what said idea was soon.
> 
> Thoughts? As always, I love your comments!


	17. Chapter 17

After a while, Dean went upstairs. He knew that it would be a while for Benny to send an update on the wounded angel and he had to reassure the others. But when he got up there and found Gabriel and Castiel, the golden fledgling’s head shot up with a wide-eyed, disturbed look, as did Abner, a young angel that had just been admitted to Benny’s rehab program.

“You smell like mint,” Gabriel muttered and shifted away on the chair he was sitting in. “Don’t like mint.”

Dean glanced at Adina for an explanation. 

“How’s Bart?” Rebecca asked before Adina could say anything. 

“I don’t know. Benny hasn’t called me with an update. Ellen took them to her office to get him patched up. She had to give him some mint to relax so she could get his bad wing splinted and still for the car ride. I’m hoping Benny’ll call or text soon but I’m planning on staying around until he does, even if it means staying the night.”

It took Dean taking a shower and borrowing Benny’s clothes for Gabriel to be comfortable being around him, but the moment the mint scent was off of him, the young archangel crawled into his arms. Castiel was busy wrestling with Abner, who was noticeably being gentle. The elder of the two had Castiel squirming on his back, pinned down, and was chirping something to him. Joshua looked over and chirped as well as Cas struggled to get out. Joshua chirped once more and Castiel glanced over at him then Abner, who nodded. Castiel managed to curl his body up and drive a foot against Abner’s throat, who released him with a choked-off cough. Despite this, he was grinning at Castiel, who turned to give Dean a wide smile.

“You did good, buddy,” He told the fledgling as Gabriel crawled all over Dean. He had settled on the man’s shoulders for a bit but was now dumping himself into Dean’s lap then climbed up to his head. Staying as still as possible, Dean let the little one climb. He wasn’t sure why the gold-winged angel did this, but didn’t argue. It had been a rough day.

Eventually, he left Dean to join in the wrestling with Abner while various angels watched and chirped what Dean assumed to be advice and tips. Eventually, they stopped due to Rebecca and Josiah deciding it was time for dinner. The group started to troop downstairs, Gabriel hanging back at the faint scent of mint that Dean couldn’t smell, but assumed the angels could. Abner, strangely, seemed to perk up and his yellow-streaked gray wings shifted strangely. He almost started pushing past angels to get down faster, but a sharp chirp from Adina froze him in his tracks. The matronly angel spoke sternly, but her voice softened as Abner started to look suitably chastised. One wing patted his and by now, most everyone was downstairs.

Dean was the last to go down. Adina and Abner left but Gabriel didn’t want to go down.

“What’s the matter?” He asked. 

Gabriel looked strangely nervous. “Don’t wanna… Don’t wanna go fuzzy.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Gabriel didn’t seem to want to reply. By now, he was sitting on the tile floor, chin resting on his knees as his wings shrouded him. Soon later, as Dean was trying to understand, Abner came up at some point, chirping at first but when he noticed Dean, he paused.

“There’s… no mint,” He told Gabriel haltingly, frowning in concentration. It was then that Dean remembered Benny had said that, up until a few months ago, Abner had been wild and never had contact with humans and so was only just now learning to speak English. He still couldn’t remember  _ why _ Abner had been admitted. He seemed to have adapted well and looked just fine.

This convinced Gabriel to come down, though he insisted on Dean carrying him down the stairs. The man noted, as he lifted the angel, that he was getting noticeably heavier and it wasn't just because of the wings. 

"You're getting big, kiddo," he murmured. Gabriel ruffled his wings, fluffing the feathers up.

By the time Dean made it downstairs, most of the angels were in the main dining room of the restaurant. The sign was flipped to  _ closed _ and Josiah, Adina, and Duma were working together to get the tables back into place and Abner was going over to join them. Joshua and Rebecca were nowhere to be seen, but there was noise coming from the kitchen. Elijah was sitting down, his crutch tossed carelessly away from his seat as he leaned over and spoke to Castiel, presumably telling a story as the fledgling was sitting on the ground in front of him, captivated. 

Dean chose to take Gabriel over to his brother. “We okay to join you?” He asked at a slight pause in Elijah’s words. He’s talking about flying, Dean thinks.

“Of course,” The one-winged angel replied. “Welcome. We’re just talking about my first time flying.”

Dean set Gabriel on the ground next to Castiel. “Do you mind watching them?” He asked. “I’m gonna go check on everyone else.”

“Of course,” Elijah responded, then chirped at the fledglings. Abner joined their circle as Dean went to the kitchen to find Joshua and Rebecca discussing as they moved dishes around, cooking.

“Hey guys,” He murmured. “What are you doing?”

“Making dinner,” Joshua reached around Rebecca to grab something. “We’ve been taught enough to know how. Benny, Bart, and Elizabeth are, of course, better, but we can make do.”

Dean nodded and left the angels to do their thing. At some point during the night, Castiel got really fussy about his wings, squirming uncomfortably. Adina, who had been about to go to bed, leaned down and scratched the wing, causing him to collapse in relief. Dean thought he was being overdramatic, but maybe he wasn’t. What did he know about molt?

Near their bedtime, as Dean was anxiously checking his phone for an update, Castiel crawled in his lap.

“Itchy,” The fledgling whined, dark wings fluttering. “Don’t like it.”

Dean buried a hand in the soft downy feathers, petting gently. “That feel better?”

Castiel just let out a sigh and arranged himself to lay across Dean’s lap, making it clear he didn’t want to move. Dean shrugged and went with it, putting his phone down and burying both hands in dark feathers. Castiel relaxed on him, falling limp while his eyes closed.

After a little while, Dean checked the time. “Yeah, it’s bedtime,” He murmured. Castiel sleepily mumbled protest when Dean stopped petting and lifted his head. Dean picked him up, holding him on his back like a baby while he went to hunt down Gabriel, who he found basically asleep on top of a bookshelf, and scooped the little one up. He was met with little resistance as he set them in a blanket nest in Bart and Josiah’s shared room. He left the two curled up together and returned downstairs, where only a few angels were left awake. Many had gone to bed fairly early, tired due to the upcoming molt and crazy day.

It was after the last two - Josiah and Rebecca - had gone to bed that Dean got the phone call.

“Hello? Benny? How is he?” He answered quickly.

“ _ He’s… He’s real hurt, _ ” Benny’s voice was quiet, carefully composed. Dean could tell that he was seconds away from breaking. “ _ He might not make it through the night. _ ”

“Oh damn,” Dean breathed. “How? He didn’t seem that hurt earlier.”

“ _ Cracked ribs, broken wing, we can handle those _ ,” Benny sighed. “ _ But an air sac in the wing was collapsed and he’s on a ventilator while they try to reinflate it. Angels have to have all their lungs and air sacs working right, they’re actually really fragile creatures sometimes.” _

“But Bart’s strong, he'll pull through, right?”

“ _ Dean, he shouldn’t even be alive right now. He’s already damn lucky to have made it this far _ ,” Benny sounds like he’s about to burst into tears now. “ _ The mortality rate on injuries like this is ridiculously high and if the wing doesn’t heal right, there may be a chance he has to be euthanized anyway. _ ”

Dean fell silent. “... So what do I tell these guys here?”

Benny sighed. “ _ That he’s not doing great. He won’t be coming home for a while. When - if - he does, he’ll be doped up on pain meds and sleeping constantly. But he can only leave if the air sac reinflates and it’s stretched and damaged. It may be too damaged to be fully effective again, he’d be working on much less air than he’s used to. He may not fly, at least for a while. _ ”

“Do you want me to come over?” Dean asked hesitantly. “Everyone’s in bed now, I can be there with you.”

Benny hesitated. “ _ Only if you really want to see him like this. He’s really… It’s difficult, Dean. I’ve never seen him like this, not even when he got real sick one year. He’s always been just fine, he hates getting taken in to the vet to get even a checkup. And now this… _ ”

“I’m coming over, Benny,” Dean stood up and grabbed his jacket. It was still raining hard outside and Dean, with a pang of sorrow, thinks about how Cas and Gabe would have loved jumping through the puddles, if Cas hadn’t been terrified of them. “Gimme a few minutes.”

“ _ Okay _ ,” Benny sighs his consent as Dean starts the car up and heads off to Ellen’s.

When he gets there, the parking lot is near deserted. There’s nobody in the lobby, though the door is unlocked, and it’s quiet. Almost  _ too _ quiet. 

“Hello?” Dean called. There’s some rustling and Ash emerges. 

“Benny said you were on your way,” He says as a greeting. “You here for Bart?”

“Yeah,” Dean glanced around him. The office is kind of eerie after-hours. “How’s he doing?”

“Not good,” Ash shook his head as he led Dean to the correct room. “You may want to prepare yourself. It’s not pretty.”

Dean nodded as Ash knocked lightly on a closed door, opening it without waiting for a response. Inside are two figures.

The first is Bart, lying on the bed, tube down his throat, eyes closed, and pale. He’s hooked up to monitors and frankly, if he wasn’t, he’d look dead. Bandages covered his injured wing, feathers almost completely concealed by the white material. The second is Bnny, sitting on Bart’s right side. He’s not holding his hand because of the heart monitor, but he looks completely torn up and like he’d been crying.

“Thanks for coming,” His voice is hoarse and Dean was right - he  _ had _ been crying. 

“Of course,” Dean answered, taking a seat next to Benny. “How is he?”

“Same as he was. No change.”

Dean patted Benny’s shoulder and settled in to wait.

It took two days to get the air sac reinflated, another three for Bart to wake up, and two more before Ellen would discharge him. The whole time, Dean was in and out, alternating between leaving the fledglings at Benny’s while he was at work, visiting Bart to bring back updates, and staying at the restaurant. Benny stayed with Bart the whole time unless Ellen made him leave, and a trusted staff member, Elizabeth took over as temporary manager.

At some point during this, multiple angels, including Castiel, started dropping feathers and the fledgling spent much of his time shifting and squirming uncomfortably. Gabriel, on the fourth day, started ruffling his wings as the itch sprung up under his feathers as well. There was much grumbling on the upper floor of Benny’s diner and detached feathers became a common sight. At some point, Josiah led the group of them outside, where they spent much of the day running around behind the building, playing and shedding. Gabriel ended up begging for scritches on his newer wings and in the evenings, it became a common sight for Dean to be carrying him or Castiel, scritching at the itching feathers while he went around doing whatever. Soon after Bart got home, though, Castiel grew irritable and didn’t want anybody touching his quickly-baring wings. They were sensitive now and the first feathers were starting to poke through already.

It was the day Benny was bringing Bart home. It was after close and the human staff was finishing up their jobs. Dean and most of the angels were waiting in the dining room as Benny parked.

Becca hopped up from her seat to open the door as Benny carried Bart in. The injured angel had one wing bound carefully, the other half folded and propped between him and Benny. His head was laying against Benny and he was mumbling something, looking almost asleep.

“I’m just gonna run him upstairs to rest, then we can talk,” Benny told his patients. As he passed Dean, Bart mumbled something like “And then the bee said  _ ‘Woooo’  _ and flew into the sun.”

“That’s nice, Bart,” Benny replied as he took the angel upstairs, shaking his head at Dean. He reemerged soon later, and had dropped off his bag as well. 

“How is he?” Josiah broke the silence first.

“He’s doing better,” Benny replied while signing. “He’s really loopy on pain meds right now, but they’re keeping him comfortable, so I won’t argue.”

“Will he be okay?” Adina asked.

Benny’s face tightened. “Ellen said that as long as he doesn’t get infected, he should make it. The biggest problem is that one of his air sacs collapsed. They got it to reinflate, but they’re not positive it’ll stay like that, so he’s got to have as little motion as possible while he heals.”

A few days later, after going home, Dean went to visit Sam, who still had not been released. They’d moved him to a more permanent residence while they helped him through PT. At the lack of progress, to Sam, he was getting frustrated and tired, but brightened when he saw the fledglings, though Cas wasn’t very receptive. They both cuddled with him momentarily, but Castiel got off soon later. This had been before Gabriel started his own molt, so he’d been feeling fine. Dean explained what was wrong with the dark-feathered fledgling and Sam quickly understood. He also told Dean to send his sympathies to Benny and the angels.

One day, while visiting, Dean went upstairs to visit Bart. Benny had said he’d been more lucid and aware as the dose was slowly being lowered.

“Hey, Bart,” Dean knocked gently on the empty door. The blond angel’s head lifted momentarily to see who it was before falling back with a  _ huff _ .

“Hello, Dean,” Bart greeted softly. 

“How you feeling?” He asked as he pulled over a chair from a desk. “Need anything?”

“It’s red today. The birds won’t like that,”

Benny had warned Dean that Bart often talked about colors. Something to do with his meds.

“Snakes will, though,” Bart’s head tipped to Dean as he grabbed a chair. “Don’t you think so? The snakes’ll like red?”

“Sure they will,” Dean told him. “They’ll like red.”

“That’s good,” The cardinal angel sighed. “Don’t want the snakes unhappy. They get fussy. It’s been blue a lot and they don’t like blue.”

“Why is that?” Dean decided to humor him. This was kind of amusing.

“Snakes are  _ not _ blue,” Bart looks deadly serious amid the drugged look in his blue eyes. “Snakes  _ hate _ blue. Says it makes their scales all curly. Red is good for snakes, they think it feels good.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Personally, I like green days. Those feel nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, green’s soothing. Yellow makes me itchy.” Bart’s starting to slur a little bit. He looked tired as he mumbled about colors. “Yellow days aren’t fun but they mean something good’s gonna happen soon. It was yellow about two weeks ago. Did anything good happen two weeks ago?”

“Uh, I got approved for ownership of Gabriel and Castiel.”

“ _ Oh yeah _ , that was on orange.” Bart stayed quiet for a few minutes. “Why do humans think they can own angels? We’re living, sentient creatures. Sure we look funky to you with our wings and claws and fangs, but we’re just normal like you. We can think, we can love,” His head rolled to face Dean again. “So why do you pretend we’re inferior?”

Dean, stunned, just shrugged. By the time he’d thought of an answer, Bart had slipped off to sleep, muttering under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY IT'S BEEN SO LONG!!!
> 
> I really didn't expect it to take so long to get this chapter up, but just after I posted the last one, everything exploded and I couldn't write for weeks. Again, I am really, really sorry!
> 
> What did you guys think of it, though? My apologies that it's short.
> 
> Happy Holidays!


	18. Chapter 18

"Go away!"

"Make me! Get off my wing!"

"Guys, calm down!" Dean called over the arguing. Gabriel and Castiel were now both well in their molt and we're constantly moody and irritable. Split up if you have to, and let me finish making lunch. Don't make me come over and split you up myself."

Castiel muttered under his breath before aiming a kick at Gabriel's ankle and tucking himself under the futon. Dean could hear him grumbling as he threw around the toys that had taken up residence below the futon and Gabriel huffed as he flipped down on the futon, arms crossed and wings bristling.

Dean finished cutting fruit in blessed silence and scooped it into bowls, setting them opposite each other before going to fetch the fussy angels. 

This had actually become a fairly regular occurrence in the apartment. Castiel, in accordance with Benny's prediction, was going through a full molt and his wings itched and ached at the same time as new feathers grew in. Gabriel was only dropping a few downy feathers as he grew in sleeker, more mature feathers, but it was occurring on all six wings and the compounding itch and ache was making him grouchy and generally irritated. Surprisingly, though, it was Castiel who instigated much of their arguments. The usually much more mild-mannered fledgling was acting completely out of character in his molt and Dean had to threaten to split them up constantly. 

"Alright, guys, time to eat," He sighed as he walked over. “Can you make it through this meal without throwing fruit pieces at each other this time?”

“Castiel started it!” Gabriel whined as he hopped off the futon.

“Did not!” The indignant cry was paired with a toy being flung from underneath the futon, hitting Gabriel in the ankle and causing the older fledgling to whip around, enraged.

“No! No, we are not starting this again!” Dean has to lean down and scoop the enraged young archangel up, battling to keep him still among flapping wings. “Calm the hell down, you two, or someone’s going into the bedroom and not coming out for half an hour.”

“Gabriel started it!” Castiel’s accusatory call came from the futon, where he was undoubtedly curled on his hands and feet, wings arched and fluffed.

“I don’t care  _ who _ started it, you two need to calm down! It’s time to eat lunch, just get through that.”

Dean plopped a sullen Gabriel in his seat and pulled the equally sulky Castiel from under the futon by his arm, dumping him unceremoniously in his seat and pushing the fruit bowls and plastic forks in front of them. Both angels ate while glaring at each other and Dean leaned against the counter, head falling back as he sighed tiredly. It had been nearly a week of this, and it was getting harder to keep them in the locker room at work. Dean didn’t want to bother Benny by asking if he could drop them off at his, especially not while his angels were molting and likely just as irritable.

An indignant squeal snatched Dean’s attention and he looked up to find that, in the few seconds he wasn’t watching them, someone had thrown their fork at the other and now Gabriel was diving across the table at Castiel.

He hurried to catch the fledgling and, restraining him as best he could, marched him to the bedroom.

“I said  _ calm. Down _ ,” He growled, his temper close to snapping. “You’re both acting ridiculous, you need to quit antagonizing each other.”

“I didn’t do it!” Gabriel squealed, thrashing.

“You tried to attack your brother! You two refuse to behave so I’m splitting you up.” Dean put him down on the bed, holding him still. “Just stay here for a half hour and calm down, okay?”

Dean didn’t give him a chance to reply and he left, closing the door behind him. A loud, frustrated scream and thud of Gabriel kicking the door sounded from the room as he approached Castiel, the dark winged fledgling pouting under the table.

“What is  _ wrong _ with you guys?” Dean sighed. “You never act like this.”

Castiel neglected to reply, crossing his arms and settling down with a pout. Either he’d used up his words or he was just sullen - or both, at this point Dean couldn’t tell and wouldn’t put it past him for either.

“I mean, I get that you’re molting and uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean you guys can try to  _ attack _ each other. That’s not okay and the more you act up, the less option I have for having you stay somewhere. Bobby isn’t going to let you stay in the locker room if you guys keep fighting and I’m not going to ask Benny if I can leave you with him - he’s gotta worry about a bunch of molting angels  _ and _ Bart. If Bobby says I can’t bring you by the garage anymore, I got nowhere to keep you. And right now, I'm not leaving you two alone here. So learn how to get along and suck it up.”

Castiel merely grumbled under his breath and shifted his wings. Dean sighed and got up, leaving the angel to mope under the table while he cleaned the mess from their fight. At some point, Castiel scurried past him to hide under the futon. It had become mostly ‘his’ place, where he kept his shed feathers and hid after fights if he hadn’t been the one confined to bedroom time-out.

Another thump sounded from the bedroom door where Gabriel kicked it, angry tears streaming down his face, before he climbed up the bed and flopped down on it. He didn’t  _ like _ being so uncomfortable all the time, nor did he like fighting with Castiel, and though he tries, it’s  _ hard _ . And Dean acts like he doesn't try at all and throws him into isolation.

True to his words, though, Dean opened the door half an hour later, expecting a still-upset fledgling to push past him. This didn’t happen. He was confused until he saw the small shape curled on one side of the bed. He went over to investigate and there, he was, Gabriel, fast asleep. But he’s frowning and dried tear tracks are visible on his cheeks.

“Aw, dammit,” Dean hissed, annoyed at himself. He sat on the side of the bed and ran a hand gently through the young archangel’s soft golden hair. “I’m sorry, kid,” Gabriel mumbled softly in his sleep and shifted to grab at Dean’s hand, to which the man picked him up, mindful of his gold wings, and settled him on his lap. The angel turned and cuddled his head against Dean’s stomach, Dean not realizing he was awake until he mumbled, softly, “I don’t like this.”

“I know, buddy,” Dean sighed, petting his head. Wings were firmly off-limits. “I know it sucks.”

“ _ Hurts _ ,” Gabriel whimpered. “Hurts a lot.” He shifted his hands, but Dean couldn’t see where. “Hurts right  _ here _ .”

Dean now moved to see where the fledgling’s hands were and  _ oh _ , that  _ hurt _ . One hand, as expected, was motioning towards his six golden wings, but the other… The other was enclosed in a fist just above his chest. 

“You’re always mad and  _ I’m _ always mad and Cassie’s always mad and it  _ hurts _ ,” Gabriel’s soft voice was tainted by sleep. He wouldn’t have been saying all this if he was fully awake. “It hurts ‘n I want it to stop,”

“Oh, Gabriel,” Dean sighed as he cuddled the sleepy archangel closer. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I don’t mean to make you hurt or sad.”

“Don’t  _ mean _ to fight, it just happens,” Gabriel’s sleepy rambling was nowhere near done, apparently. “Then you get mad and I get put in here.” Dean didn’t say anything this time, moving his hand to rub between Gabriel’s shoulders, above his wings. “I don’t like upset. Anyone upset. It hurts. It’s like the Bad Times ‘n I don’t ever wanna go back to th’ Bad Times.”

Dean could only assume these ‘Bad Times’ were the months Gabriel had been raised in the farm and he felt sick.  _ Of course _ conflict would remind him of that. His short life had been nothing  _ but _ negativity until he’d been taken and rescued by Jody. 

“I’m sorry, little bird,” Dean eventually whispered. “I’m sorry. We’ll try to stop all the fighting. I’ll find a new approach, I won’t push you into here anymore. We’ll find a new way.”

“ ‘N then ‘m  _ alone _ ,” Gabriel’s speech, already unclear, was beginning to slur. He would probably fall back asleep with little to no recollection of this conversation. “ ‘N the alone’s th’ worst. ‘T’s like b’fore Cassie but after Mama. Don’t like th’ alone. Alone’s bad. Alone was quiet.”

Dean squeezed his eyes shut, beating himself up for what he’d done to the angel. He should have realized that this kind of solitude would bring up old, terrible memories. He should’ve, he should’ve… Everything was ‘he should’ve’, not ‘he did’. Nothing positive was at least. 

“I’m sorry,” Dean repeated, combing through Gabriel’s hair. “Go to sleep, buddy, okay? You’ll feel better when you wake up.” 

He wasn’t actually sure if Gabriel had already drifted back to sleep when he said that. But, either way, the fledgling had fallen back into fitful rest and Dean picked him up, carrying him out of the dark bedroom. Castiel was nowhere to be seen, possibly under the futon, and Dean set Gabriel carefully on the futon, nestled up on pillows and blankets. 

“Hey, Castiel?” Dean started softly, so as not to risk waking Gabriel. “Gabriel’s asleep. He’s on the futon now. I’d take a nap if I were you, I’m going to need to go out to the store soon.”

Castiel’s head poked out from under the futon. “Can I go with?”

“No, I don’t want to leave Gabriel on his own.” Dean sat on the floor in front of the little dark fledgling. “Can you promise that if he wakes up while I’m gone, you’ll do what you can not to fight?”

“I don’t start it,” The one good thing Dean could see coming out of all this was that Castiel was talking more due to his irritability and growing comfort around the apartment. 

“I know, I know,” If both fledglings were to be believed, neither started their fights. But someone did and Dean knew both of them instigated their fair share. “But if he tries to start a fight will you not respond? Do your best not to fight?”

Castiel crawled out and rested his head on Dean’s knee. “Guess so.”

“Thank you,” Dean ruffled Castiel’s black hair a little. “I appreciate that.”

Castiel mumbled a little and retreated back under the futon, leaving Dean to get up and leave. After loading his car with groceries, he paused in the parking lot to reply to an email - Charles Shurley was trying to set up a day to meet with him. They’d decided after the angels finished molting. He’d sent some advice on how to help the fledglings through the unpleasantness, including some kinds of treats that Dean detoured to the nearest AngeliCo store to buy. He finally returned home and carried his groceries in, uneasy nervousness swirling through him. How had the angels behaved in his absence?

He needn’t have worried. Much. Nothing was destroyed but Gabriel was perched on the refrigerator, hissing at Castiel while the younger chirped up at him. To his utter shock, the golden fledgling launched himself from the fridge at his brother, landing near him, giving just enough time for Castiel to jump on him. The two tussled for a bit before Castiel broke off and darted away, Gabriel giving chase and bowling him over. Arms full of groceries, Dean couldn’t do anything but shout, “Hey!” and dump them on the ground. Both fledglings stopped, sitting up with small smiles on their faces.

“Hi Bean!” Gabriel was the first to come over, scurrying to look in the grocery bags. “What’ya get?”

“Castiel, what did I say about fighting?” Dean asked scoldingly.

“Weren’t fighting!” Gabriel chirped. Unseen by either of the two, Castiel was crouching down with a small smirk and he pounced on his brother. This drew Gabriel’s attention completely away from Dean and he kicked the smaller angel away before the two streaked away, jumping off and on various pieces of furniture. Dean was left in the kitchen and shrugged, putting the groceries away. He nearly tripped over them as they darted between his legs as he was almost finished and he looked up to find them racing each other up the fridge. Castiel made it up first and he spread his patchy dark wings in triumph, crowing at his brother, who batted him over the head with a wing. They peered over the edge at Dean, who by now was watching them confusedly. Castiel chirruped at him and backed to the back of the fridge, leaving Gabriel at the front. 

The golden archangel spread his six wings, four stumpy and two with limited movement, and flapped them a little. He then, surprising Dean yet again, jumped off the fridge, landing easily on the floor. He then turned and chirped up at Castiel, who was peering down at him. He seemed to be encouraging him, as the fledgling looked nervous.

It was then that Dean was reminded that the angels, no matter how human they looked, were still technically animals. They were behaving as animals did. They were playing as young angels must usually in the wild, jumping with their wings spread. Perhaps it was a pre-flight thing. But what caused this sudden behavior change from their constant fighting to them playing again. They hadn’t played with each other since… Oh, since a little after molt started. They’d been too irritable, too temperamental. Were they feeling better? Or had they listened to Dean asking that they stop fighting. Perhaps they’d talked to each other, come to an understanding. Who knew. Whatever it was, the rambunctious babies were finally,  _ finally _ calmed down and behaving mostly civilly.

If jumping off a refrigerator counted as civil.

Dean shrugged and went to sit on the futon. If they wanted to play and act like raving lunatics, that was their problem. So long as they didn’t break anything. They’d done good with that so far, but they’d never been so rambunctious. At least Dean wasn’t one to keep breakable things. 

With a few hours to dinner and it being up to the angels to tell him if they wanted a snack, Dean had little to do except check for an update on his application for disability or text Sam. After sitting on the futon and doing the first task, he did the second, doubtful that he’d get a reply very fast. He was pretty sure Sam was in PT right now. 

Sure enough, there was no reply, but he was quickly distracted from this by two fledglings running across his lap. A gold feather fluttered behind the two, landing gently next to Dean. He picked it up. It was soft and downy, as were all the others he’d dropped. 

With nothing else to do, Dean decided to take a nap and hope he didn’t get squished by a fledgling. He managed this successfully and woke up a few hours later to soft chirping. He looked up to see Gabriel combing gently through Castiel’s wings - preening, he thought they’d called it. He was tugging a few loose feathers out and smoothing new ones - which looked strange and small, Dean had done research and discovered that they were called blood quills - into their correct place. When he’d finished, he tapped his brother twice on the shoulder and got a gentle nuzzle in return. With soft chirping, the two switched places and Castiel started going through Gabriel’s wings. 

Eventually, it was dinnertime and, soon later, bedtime for the sleepy little angels and, subsequently, Dean. Exhausted by their shenanigans, he let Gabriel crawl onto his chest and Castiel took his new normal spot on Dean’s feet. All three fell asleep fairly quickly.

Dean dreaded the next molt that would come around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry these chapters have been so short! I am struggling a bit with ideas, I've got future plot points but none of them are allowed to come in yet. t's too early for them, so we have to loiter and struggle through the timeline
> 
> On the other hand, I should be able to spend much of this week just writing, so that'll be fun!


	19. Chapter 19

Thankfully, both ended their molts soon later and returned to their normal behavior. Dean couldn’t see any change in Castiel’s wings, but Gabriel’s were a bit sleeker.

Today, the three found themselves at Benny’s again, this time for a meeting. Dean was leaning on a wall next to the door, trying not to look at where Bart had crashed, as he watched Gabriel and Castiel play in the grass. 

“Alright, guys, come here,” Dean called and after a few minutes, the two obediently came over. “Can’t get too dirty,” He murmured as he brushed dirt from Gabriel’s shirt. “Let’s go inside.”

A few minutes after they went in and asked for a table, a man walked in - he was obviously Charles Shurley, CEO of AngeliCo.

And the man Dean was meeting with. 

Conversation in the restaurant stopped at the appearance of the man. He was very well-known due to his work as an angel rights advocate and philanthropist, as well as being the CEO of the leading angel products company in the world. He was almost as well-known as men like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

He paused in the doorway, eyes scanning the room, no doubt looking for a set of six golden wings - that was the most distinctive trait Dean had given him, as well as a picture of himself. His eyes fell on the three as Dean was trying to stop Gabriel from running off - the fledgling had gotten rambunctious since molt - and walked over. 

“Dean Winchester?” He asked. His voice was kind of higher-pitched for a male.

“Uh, yeah,” Dean accepted the offered hand to shake. “Charles Shurley?”

“Please. Call me Chuck,” The man’s face lit in a small grin.

“Chuck then.”

“My apologies for, well,” Chuck waved a hand over himself, gesturing at his clothing - he was wearing a nice suit. “I had a meeting that ran late and couldn’t get to my house to change.”

“It’s fine,” Dean shrugged. He  _ had _ been feeling a bit underdressed, like he should have dressed nicer. The man  _ was _ rich and he likely had higher standards than Dean did.

“Dean Winchester?” A waitress - named Doris - called. “Your table’s ready.”

She led them to a table and left them with menus with the promise to return for drinks shortly. 

“Are these your angels?” Chuck asked as Dean helped Castiel onto a seat. The little fledgling still struggled a bit. 

“Yeah. There was a bit of a weird situation, they used to be my brother’s,”

Chuck nodded. “I think you explained some of that in your email. APS, right?” Dean nodded and Chuck grimaced. “They do a lot of good in getting angels out of bad situations, but they get into things they shouldn’t sometimes. Anyway, you mentioned they were farmies?”

“Yeah-” Dean explained the known damage dealt and how he’d tried to help them, including the pending disability applications. Chuck folded his hands in front of him. He nodded pensively when Dean finished.

“So, you asked for advice on how to care for an archangel, is that it?”

“Yeah, kinda, but generally just information on them in general. I was told you’ve got three?”

Chuck nodded. “I do. Two of them are outside, stretching their wings a little. One’s in the middle of molt, the other is about to start.”

Dean winced. “These guys just finished. Wouldn’t stop fighting.”

“We did stop!” Gabriel protested. At some point during the conversation, they’d ordered and gotten their food and Gabriel had stuffed his face full of cantaloupe right when he’d spoken up.

“Yeah, then you tried to destroy my apartment by jumping off the fridge,” Dean shot back playfully. Gabriel made a face at him and turned back to his food. Dean grinned and fondly shook his head.

Chuck huffed a small laugh. “You’ll find that he’ll probably be fairly energetic. Young archangels tend to be, then calm down when they get older. Angels in general do like climbing, though, especially when they’re younger, and archangels tend to climb more.”

“That’s good to know,”

“Also, their diets will be a bit different. Eventually, at about two years old, he’ll develop lactose intolerance and you’ll notice that citrus will make him sick. We’re not sure  _ why _ these changes happen, but of all the archangels I have ever seen, each one is lactose intolerant and can’t eat citrus. We’ve also found that angels thrive better on meat diets.”

“Wait, what? I thought they were vegetarian. That’s what I’ve been told.”

Chuck nodded. “That’s the general assumption, yes, but you see their fangs? Carnivorous animals have fangs so they can eat meat and we’ve found that the angels fare better on a diet with meat, they tend to be happier, healthier, they’ll have more muscle mass, they just tend to live better when getting meat. Your archangel-”

“Gabriel,”

“-Gabriel will especially, his metabolism is higher than a typical angel’s. Most multi-winged angels have higher metabolism, but archangels tend to be highest and therefore eat the most. They do heal from injuries faster, though, once the wings are sprouted.”

Dean nodded as he took in this information. “Is that all?”

Chuck hummed thoughtfully as he took another bite of his food. “Archangels  _ do _ show greater intelligence than most typical angels, but there is the possibility that that statistic is affected by circumstances in the angel’s youth, starting from before they hatch out of their egg. It’s interesting, we’re finding that environmental factors affect in-egg angels similarly to how they would affect a human fetus in the mother’s womb- Sorry, you’re probably not interested in that,” Chuck cut himself off.

“Actually, no, that does seem interesting,” Dean replied, immediately wondering - how might Gabriel and Castiel have been affected?

“Well, some studies are showing that heightened stress and extra noise, especially loud noise, can cause a fledgling to be more alert and on guard. Like with birds, temperature fluctuations can affect their development in the egg and somehow, and we’re not sure how, substances like tobacco smoke are showing to affect the unborn angel. We have no idea how this is happening. Along with all that, somehow, if the mother or whoever is incubating the egg has heightened stress levels, the fledgling will show some developmental changes. It’s all really early data we’re gathering, but it’s all quite interesting really.”

“It is,” A thought suddenly occurred to Dean. “Didn’t you say you’d brought some of your angels?”

Chuck’s eyes widened. “I did. Please, excuse me, I’ll be right back.” He hopped up from the table and disappeared out the door, returning soon later, shaking his head and laughing. “They didn’t want to come in.”

Following some more conversation as they finished their meal, the two men and angels walked outside. 

“Well, thank you for meeting with me,” Chuck said. “And allowing me to meet Gabriel. Archangels are so rare that I take every opportunity that I can to meet one.”

“Thanks for the information,” Dean replied as they pushed out of the doors. “Guys, wait-!” This was called to Gabriel and Castiel, who pushed past him to run outside, giggling.

Outside, in a patch of grass, were two tussling angels. Wings were flared wide and Dean could see that at least one of them had six - six flamingo-pink wings.

“Michael, Luci,” Chuck called, laughing softly. The angels’ heads popped up and the one one the bottom grimaced and shoved the other off. He stood up, brushing himself off.

Both were dressed in suits. The one that had been pinned had a jacket and tie on and cast a sour look at the other as he wiped away as much dirt and dust away as he could. He had six silver wings, covered in dust, which he stretched and shook out. A feather fluttered away at the movement. The other, a blond with six pink wings, was wearing only a rumpled white dress-shirt and dress pants, the tie and suit jacket discarded in a pile on the grass.

“Clean yourselves up,” Chuck told them as he led Dean and the fledglings over. “You know better than to behave like that, especially when I’m in a meeting.”

“Sorry, Chuck,” The silver-winged one muttered, batting a clump of dirt from his feathers. The other simply shrugged, a lazy grin playing on his lips as he adjusted his shirt.

“Dean, these are Michael-” He motioned to the silver-winged one- “-And Lucifer. Two of my archangels. Mich, Luce, these are Dean, Castiel, and Gabriel.”

Both angels were hiding behind Dean’s legs, but Michael’s head tipped just slightly when he caught sight of Gabriel’s six wings.

“He’s an arch too?”

Lucifer - what a strange name for an angel, but whatever - got down on one knee and started chirping softly at both angels - Dean could see him making an effort to speak to Castiel too. Something he said must have struck a nerve with Gabriel because he hissed, wings puffing and four flaring as he pushed Castiel behind him. Lucifer smirked and nodded before continuing, Gabriel eventually relaxing and blinking at him in confusion.

“Lucifer, leave them alone,” Michael sighed before turning back to Chuck. “He’s young. I haven’t seen a young arch since Raphael and he grew up a while ago.”

Gabriel tugged on Dean’s pant leg and the man picked him up, allowing Castiel to - for whatever reason - crawl up his shirt onto his shoulders. Both young angels turned to glare at Lucifer, who laughed a little, and Michael nudged him before chirping exasperatedly at the fledglings. 

The humans watched these proceedings in silence, letting the angels do as they wished. Chuck seemed like he’d expected this, Lucifer irritating Gabriel. Perhaps he’d done it before with whoever “Raphael” was. 

Somehow, the pink-winged archangel managed to coax the fledglings off to play, leaving Michael, Dean, and Chuck standing there in the parking lot. Before they could say anything, though, a timid voice spoke up behind them. 

“Dean?”

They turned to see Abner standing there, looking sick, streaky wings shuffling nervously. 

“Mr. Benny asked… if you… were going to talk… later.” He spoke haltingly, frowning as he stumbled over the English then gave a decisive nod when he was finished.

“Uh, yeah, I’ll come hang out. Might check on Bart. Just go ahead and tell him yeah, okay?”

Abner mouthed the words to himself then nodded and turned to go inside, bracing one hand against the wall and glancing at where Bart had crashed.

“Is he okay?” Michael asked, frowning after the young angel.

“Benny, the owner of the restaurant, rehabilitates angels. Abner’s new, inpatient, but I’m not sure what he’s in for.”

“Who’s Bart?” Chuck asked.

“One of Benny’s permanent angels. He had an accident a few weeks ago, lost control in a storm and crashed into the wall,” Dean glanced over at the still noticeable mark in the wall. Chuck winced and turned to watch the four angels play - Michael had joined them at some point. The adults didn’t seem to care that the little ones were climbing all over them, simply laughing and playing along with them. 

“The little angel, Abner?” Chuck started after a while. “He mentioned Benny wanted to see you?”

Dean nodded. “He probably wants to know how this is going. And how Gabriel and Castiel are after the molt. He’s been pretty invested in these guys, especially since I’m going to eventually enroll them in his rehab when they’re a little older. Gabriel will need it so he can maybe have a hope of flying. Gonna try to see if we can get Castiel talking a little more. If not talking, then sign language. Just get him to communicate better, you know?”

“Well,” Chuck checked his watch. “If you want, I’ll watch them and you can go talk to him?”

“I mean, if you want,” Dean shrugged.

“I’d like to,” Chuck smiled. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a young archangel. Ah, if I have to leave though, where should I take them?”

“There should be angels hanging around. Take them to any that have a blue bracelet, they all know Gabriel and Castiel,” Dean wasn’t sure about trusting Chuck with Gabriel and Castiel, but he also didn’t want to interrupt their play. He was hesitant about leaving, though, and Chuck noticed. 

“You can go,” He murmured. “I swear, nothing bad will come to them.”

With a bit more hesitation, Dean finally went inside, where he was told Benny was waiting for him upstairs. After trooping up the thin staircase, he emerged on the rehab floor, where he could hear Benny speaking softly from Bart’s room. He knocked on the frame of the half-open door then pushed it open, peeking in.

“Hey,” He called softly. Benny, who was sitting next to Bart, looked up and waved him in. Becca was sitting behind Bart, gently combing her fingers through his uninjured wing as the other lay still against the bed. Bart was shirtless, dark bruising covering his chest. “How’s he doing?”

“It’s  _ purple _ ,” Bart muttered before Benny or Becca could answer Dean. “Everything’s  _ purple _ .”

“He hates purple days,” Benny explained softly and Becca carefully removed a feather and set it next to her. “He’s been in a bad mood for the last two days, his molt’s really messing with him.”

“ _ Purple _ ,” Bart insisted grumpily, as though that would explain anything. 

“We know, redbird, we know,” Becca murmured. “Hold still, you don’t want to hurt yourself.”

Benny stood up and ushered Dean out, closing the door behind them with a soft  _ click _ .

“How’d it go?” He asked.

“Pretty well, I think. He said Gabriel will eventually end up being lactose intolerant and, for some reason, won’t be able to eat citrus. He brought his two archangels, they’re playing with Gabriel and Castiel now-  _ dammit _ , I forgot to ask him about clothes for an archangel! Crap.”

“You said the angels are still there, ask him later?” Benny suggested. Dean shrugged and nodded. 

“Yeah, I’ll probably do that. Anyway, how’s Bart doing? Really.”

Benny sighed. “He’s healing. Something about his meds give him this synesthesia-like behavior, you’ve heard him. Talking about the colors?”

“Yeah. It’s weird.”

“I know. It helps me figure out how he’s feeling, though, because he describes his day in straight colors. If it’s green, he’s feeling pretty good. Red, blue, and orange are in between, yellow is not bad but not great, and purple…” Benny shook his head. “Purple is when even the meds aren’t enough. Molt is seriously messing with him, because he can’t shed feathers right with the cast and we can’t take the cast off. He’s squished, he can’t stretch, his wings are already achy and itchy, and then add on multiple broken bones, healing stitches, and a pretty weak lung sac, he’s not feeling very good. I’m not giving him mint, I don’t even  _ have _ mint right now with Abner around, and he’s on the highest dose I’m comfortable giving him. I can’t really help him, the best we can do right now is Becca combing through his wings and pulling out the shedding feathers. She’s doing it on both his good wing and what she can get to of the bad wing.”

Benny looked stressed and tired. Dean could understand - Bart had been around since before Benny had come from Louisiana. They were closer than the two men were, probably as close as Dean and Sam. And if Dean had to care for Sam, unable to help him any more, Dean would probably be having just as difficult a time as Benny was. 

“He’ll be okay,” Dean reassured. “He’s strong and he’s got you and Ellen taking care of him.”

Benny sighed heavily. “I suppose. I’m just worried about him, though. If this bone doesn’t heal right…” His voice lowered to near a whisper. “If things don’t heal right, we may have to put him down.”

“ _ What _ !?” Dean hissed. “Why?”

“It’s called a non-union, when the body doesn’t heal right. Non-unions are almost always euthanized. It’s cruel to keep them alive… But I don’t, I can’t lose Bart…”

“Hey,” Dean carefully guided Benny to the small dining room across from Bart’s room. “Don’t worry about it, I’m sure he’ll be okay. How’d you meet him anyway? You never told me.”

They were sitting at a table now and Benny rested his elbows on the wooden surface, folding his hands under his chin. “I never told you when, either, did I?”

He hummed thoughtfully as Dean shook his head. “Found him in Louisiana. He was all alone, sitting out in the open. He was real tiny, his eyes were sealed, his wings were pretty bare. He couldn’t have been more than a day or two old.”

“Did his mom abandon him?”

“Looked that way. Angel moms, when the baby hatches and they have a defect, like Bart being born with one arm, they’ll leave the baby out in the open. Feed it once then find a spot to put it. Then, and I didn’t know this at the time, they hide somewhere nearby and watch to see if the baby lives through the night. If the baby lasts a day, then mom will take it back, feed and raise it like normal. If not, well,” Benny shrugged. “No resources wasted. It’s brutal, but angels aren’t going to raise a sickly baby that won’t survive, not in the wild. They need to focus on the healthy ones. Anyway, I came across Bart in a little clearing in the bayou, still have no clue what an angel was doing in the swamps, and he was crying out these little squeaks. I picked him up, he was shivering, so I took him home. I thought he’d been abandoned. Back then, we didn’t know that his mom would have taken him back, so the vet just told me to feed him, warm him up… If it was now, I’d’ve been told to put him back. But this was… Oh, a good 20 years ago. I was just in college, had to sneak him into my dorm.” A nostalgic grin grew on Benny’s face. “They found him at one point, when he was about two months old. He was just starting to walk on fours and was falling over cause of the missing arm. I got back from class like, two minutes after they found him and had him cornered, he was hissing and squeaking but immediately calmed down when I grabbed him. With just one arm, and he was a cute baby, they decided not to make me get rid of him. Actually encouraged me to take him with me to class.”

“How’d that go?”

“My professors weren’t really fans at first, but he won them over quick. Culinary, especially, didn’t want a “dirty animal” in the kitchen, but after a while, he couldn’t keep denying him. Whenever he tried to make him sit out in the hall, he’d be right out the door, crying these pathetic little chirps and scratch at the door. Then I bought this baby carrier thing eventually, had him strapped up against my chest almost constantly and the professor couldn’t keep saying no. Especially when he was still getting bottle fed and would lean against a bookshelf or my workspace to support the bottle with his hand and the side of whatever he was against. He’d also lay on his back and hold the bottle with his feet sometimes.” Benny broke into a smile. “It was pretty cute.”

“Sounds like it,” Dean laughed. 

The two stayed there for a while, Benny reflecting on raising Bart. Becca eventually joined them, stating that Bart had fallen asleep. After some more time, Dean stood up, announcing that it was time to go, Gabriel and Castiel needed to get home. Benny followed him out to find that Chuck was still there, but the two adult archangels, and the fledglings, had disappeared.

“Where are they?” Dean asked, trying to tamp down his worry. Chuck pointed to the sky, where two large dark shapes were soaring around.

“Mich and Luci took them flying. Don’t worry, it’s what they usually do, adults to babies. My apologies, though, for not checking with you. Gabriel and Castiel both seemed excited and I assumed it would be okay.”

Dean cast a nervous eye at the sky.

“Dean, it’s probably okay,” Benny cut in. “Archangels are notoriously protective. They won’t let anything happen to the fledglings.”

Dean sighed but nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets and watching the sky nervously. Eventually, Michael swooped down first, silver wings folding neatly as Castiel released the notches under the archangel’s neck. Lucifer soon followed, keeping his own pink wings slightly spread as he let Gabriel down, both fledglings running to Dean as Gabriel excitedly chattered about the flight.

“Is something wrong with Castiel?” Michael asked softly. “He didn’t say a word.”

“He’s selectively mute,” Benny explained as Dean grunted confirmation, both fledglings climbing chaotically over him. “He doesn’t speak to people he doesn’t know.”

Dean tuned out their conversation, listening to Gabriel’s senseless chatter, but the fledgling froze suddenly, balanced on Dean’s shoulder.

“Will I ever be able to fly on my own?” He asked, whiskey eyes round and scared. Castiel paused at the question as shock ran through everyone else in the small crowd.

“I’m sure you will,” Benny was the first to answer. “If Dean allows me, I will help you to be strong enough to fly.”

“Of course I’ll allow you,” Dean automatically replied. “Gabriel, we’re going to do everything we can to help you.”

“Ah, could you remind me how old he was when he was stripped?” Chuck cut in, somewhat timidly. Gabriel and Castiel both flinched at the word  _ stripped _ . 

“Couldn’t have been older than 7 months,” Dean replied. 

“Just before Cassie,” Gabriel mumbled. 

“Then, between like, four and seven months?”

Chuck thought for a moment. “If his development wasn’t too delayed, you may be able to surgically fix some of the damage done.”

“Wait, really?” Benny asked. “I didn’t know that you could fix damage done by stripping.”

Chuck and Benny fell into a conversation about this. Dean ended up tuning them out after Chuck went into more depth than the article he’d read had been in. He was a mechanic, he didn’t understand that sort of thing.

Without him noticing, Castiel had crawled onto Dean’s other shoulder.

“Can we go home?” The fledgling whispered into his ear. 

Dean looked at him. “You okay?”

Castiel nodded then shifted. “Just wanna go home.”

“Alright,” Dean nodded, confused by the sudden change, but Castiel could have just been people-d out. “Hey, Benny, Chuck, I have to get going, these guys need to get home.”

Chuck checked his watch and startled. “Oh, you’re right. My apologies for keeping you so long.”

“No, you’re fine,” Dean replied. After a few more short farewells, Dean and his fledglings were trooping over to his car. “What did you two think?” He asked after they pulled out of the parking lot.

“Luci was fun,” Gabriel replied. “Michael was kinda grumpy.” Castiel nodded his agreement and stared out the window. 

“Cas, is something wrong?” Dean asked, now getting worried. Even for the quiet angel, this was unusual.

Castiel sighed softly. “Michael didn’t like that I don’t speak.”

“Yeah?”

“Is there something wrong with me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ouch Cas :'(
> 
> Special thanks to gabethedraig and kestrelsparverius on Tumblr for ideas about baby!Bart!
> 
> My apologies for taking so long on this chapter!!


	20. Chapter 20

“Really, though, how are you?”

Dean was sitting in the hospital again, next to Sam’s bed. His brother was still in his sling, no longer hooked up to any of the machines he’d been on. He looked perfectly fine, save for the sling.

“Bored,” Sam sighed. “Tired. I hate being here, but I still have to get used to just having one useful arm. I don’t think I’m able to be on my own yet,” He raked his good hand through his hair. “Just gotta get used to it.”

Castiel was sitting under a chair in the corner. It had taken some urging, but he wasn’t sitting on the bare ground and had accepted using Dean’s flannel as a cushion between himself and the hard tile. Gabriel was on top of the chair. He’d been trying to talk to his brother, but the younger of the two was unresponsive and he’d eventually given up. Now, he was occupied by something on Dean’s phone. Dean wasn’t really sure what had his attention, he didn’t have that much on his phone, but Gabriel had practically pickpocketed him to get the device.

Before Dean had agreed to come visit Sam, before the topic was even brought up, he’d had to address Castiel’s question.

_ “No, there is nothing wrong with you,” Dean replied firmly. “Why would you think there was?” _

_ “Michael thought there was.” _

_ “Michael doesn’t understand.” _

_ “Don’t listen to ‘im,” Gabriel piped up. “He don’t know nothin’. You’re just fine as you are.” _

_ “But nobody else has trouble speaking.” _

_ “Actually, when I was young, I did,” Dean told them. He didn’t really remember it, but he’d read his father’s journal. _

_ Castiel looked up at him. “Really?” _

_ “Yeah. I couldn’t make words happen. But unlike you, I didn’t have anybody I could talk to. Sam was too young and I didn’t… I didn’t want to talk to my dad. So I was always, always silent. Would you say there was something wrong with me then?” _

_ Castiel thought then shook his head. _

Despite the reassurances, though, the dark fledgling had stayed mopey and sunk into a silent spell, where he didn’t even chirp at Gabriel. It hurt, seeing him so upset, but Dean didn’t know what to do to help. The angels had exchanged their two-tap thing, though, and it seemed to make Castiel perk up some.

However, there was one problem he could possibly try to fix right now.

“You said you don’t think you can be on your own?” Dean asked. Sam nodded. “Then why don’t you come live with me for a while? I can leave the fledglings with you, stop taking them to work, and get you to PT, whatever you need. You can come see Benny, meet some of his angels, spend time with Gabe and Cas.”

Sam paused, thinking. “That’s actually not a bad idea. But do you have room? There’s only one bedroom there.”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a bigger place anyway,” Dean shrugged. “And I’ve pretty much moved to sleeping on the futon at this point, courtesy of fledglings. So you’ll have the bed, I’ll take the futon, and those two can go wherever they want.”

Dean wasn’t lying about thinking of getting a bigger place. Ever since Gabriel and Castiel had been caught by an attack of the “zoomies”, as Adina liked to call it, he’d realized that he probably needed more space and climbing places for them. His research told him that angels were naturally cliff-dwelling creatures - which aso explained why Benny was so confused, finding Bart in a swamp - and that they needed space to climb. Dean’s small apartment had been good for short-term care, but now that he owned Gabriel and Castiel and was thinking of taking Sam in as well, he needed more space. He’d already started looking, at nights after the fledglings went to sleep. 

“Are you sure?” Sam asked. “I don’t want to impose.”

“I’m sure. Besides, you’re my brother, I’m supposed to look out for you.”

Whatever Sam was about to say was interrupted by Gabriel.

“Bean?”

“Did he just-”

“Yeah, I don’t know why they do that. What is it, buddy?”

Gabriel turned his phone around to show a black screen. Dean took it and pressed the power button - a red battery flashed on the screen.

“It’s dead, kiddo,”

Instantly the fledgling’s face morphed into one of horror and Castiel peeked out from under his chair. Before they could say anything, Dean hurriedly continued.

“It means the battery ran out of charge,” He tried to reassure them. “I just have to recharge it. But until then, you can’t play.”

“Okay,” Gabriel murmured then hopped off the chair, tapped Castiel twice, and crawled up Sam’s hospital bed. “Hi Sammy,”

“Hey, Gabriel,” Sam replied, pushing a hand through the fledgling’s hair as he sat next to him. “You’ve been quiet today.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Don’t feel like talking.”

“Well, do you feel like laughing?”

Gabriel looked up at Sam, confused, as the human turned and scooped him up, maneuvering to pin the fledgling under his bad arm and started tickling his sides. Gabriel immediately started struggling and flailing as hysterical squealing laughter escaped him. 

As Gabriel squealed, Dean went to sit down. Castiel had returned to being fully curled up under the chair and Dean bent down to look at him.

“Hey, Cas?” He murmured. The fledgling turned his head slightly. “Can you look at me?”

After some hesitation, Castiel did so. Barely. He was looking at Dean from the corner of his eye, almost like he was ashamed. 

“What’s the matter, buddy?” Dean asked softly. “Why won’t you look at me?"

“... ‘m broken,” The fledgling whispered, hardly able to be heard, then pulled his wings up to shroud his head.

“No, you’re not,” Dean slipped off the seat to be closer to Castiel’s level. “What makes you think you are?”

“M ‘n Gabbie,” Castiel was, shockingly, still speaking. In this mood, that would be unlikely. “We’re not like other angels. Other angels have good wings and can talk and aren’t afraid of water.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re broken,” Dean insisted. “That means that you’ve been hurt, really really bad, and other angels haven’t, and you’re still healing.” 

Castiel’s wings tightened around his head. “But we’re not okay.”

“Nobody expects you to be,” Dean realized that his voice was soft, as though he was trying to coax a scared animal from a small space. In a way, he was. “You were hurt so, so bad. Nobody expects you to be healed yet. Nobody expects you to be for a while. You’re allowed to be not okay. But you’re not broken.”

“Was,” Castiel’s wing shifted to expose his face. “Was broken.”

“Maybe,” Dean extended a hand, hoping Castiel would leave the corner. “Maybe, but that’s in the past. You’re not anymore. You’re healing. You’re getting better. You used to not be able to talk to me and now look! We’re having a good conversation.”

Castiel shrugged, wings moving with the action. 

“Can you come here?” Dean was beginning to get desperate. The little angel had been curled up and mopey for at least an hour by now. Castiel did, however, uncurl and crawl closer to Dean before, moving very quickly, he curled up in Dean’s lap like a cat. Dean combed a hand through his hair. “Better?”

The fledgling shrugged. “Guess,”

“Well, that’s better than nothing, yeah?”

Castiel didn’t answer, instead choosing to tuck his head under his wing.

The next day found the three of them at a park, joined by Benny and some of his angels. Bart, still loopy from his meds, was at home, monitored by Josiah - Benny had said the deaf angel was feeling a bit under the weather and didn’t really want to go out. Abner, too, was absent.

Adina was helping Castiel climb a tree as Joshua and Rebecca were flying and trying to help Gabriel spread his wings. It didn’t seem very successful, especially considering that he refused to let them touch the gold limbs, but from where Dean sat, it looked like he was doing a bit better now than when they’d started. 

“So why didn’t Abner come?” Dean asked. “He’d looked sick too, yesterday - is there a bug going around?”

Benny sighed. “No, it’s not a bug. Josiah always feels kind of sick around now. Ab… Did I ever tell you why he was admitted?”

“No.”   


Benny tapped his fingers on his knee - the two humans were sitting on a bench. “Someone found him recently, stumbling around a parking lot. They caught him, took him in to Ellen… Kid was high off his ass. Dean, he’s addicted. To mint.”

“But he’s just a kid.”

Benny nodded. “I know. If he’d lived farther out, away from the city, he’d probably have been fine. From what I can gather, he’d found somebody’s garden, they were growing mint, he’d gotten stuck inside thanks to fencing designed to keep rabbits out, and spent a few days just hanging out in the mint. Owner of the garden found him and chased him out - he’d ruined the mint patch - and I guess that’s when he was found. He was at a fairly healthy weight so he couldn’t have been chasing it down for too long. But he’s staying home right now because of withdrawal. It’s kicking his little ass, especially the cravings. I’ve had to start locking him in his room if someone isn’t with him. Adina’s been helping, though, she’s practically adopted him at this point.”

Dean looked back out to where Adina was playing with Gabriel. Not too far from them, Elijah was trying to get up and walk without his crutch. It didn’t seem to be going very well. He kept falling. As Dean watched, Duma crept over to the one-winged angel. 

Benny’s phone rang and he checked the number before getting up and going away a few paces. He answered jovially enough, but his expression soon changed to shock and - anger? He started pacing, arguing with whoever it was on the other line. After a while, he nodded, rubbing his hand over his face.

“Okay. Fine, Ellen. I’ll take him. But  _ Goddammit _ you don’t understand why I  _ can’t _ , especially right now. I’ve got a fledgling going through withdrawal, Josiah’s coming down with something, Bart’s still doped up and hurt as hell -  _ Okay _ . I said fine.” A pause and a sigh. “Fine. I’ll see you in a bit. We’re at the park.”

He hung up and pushed his phone into his pocket before giving a piercing whistle. Almost immediately, the majority of his angels came over, Adina carrying Castiel and Rebecca leading Gabriel. 

“We need to go,” Benny told them shortly. “Call from Ellen. I’ll explain in the van.” He was stiff and irritated. “Dean, I’m sorry I had to cut this off. I’ll call you at some point to explain, but… Not right now. It may be best if you don’t bring Gabe and Cas for a little while. I don’t know, I’ll explain later.”

“Alright,” Dean replied, mystified. “I’ll… See you later then, I guess.”

“See you,” Benny pulled him into a short hug. “I’m sorry, brother. This wasn’t my intention.”

“It’s fine. Call from Ellen, you said? New rehabber?”

Benny nodded with a sigh. “I don’t…. I never say that I don’t want to take one. But this one… Circumstances are shit. I don’t know if I can help this one. If i even want to. But I haven’t even seen him, so… She called me over to her office.”

With a few more words of farewell, the two groups had split up. Dean’s mind was whirling as he drove home. Why would Benny tell him to keep the fledglings away? Why would he try to refuse an angel?

  
  
Some time earlier, A knock came on Jody’s door.   
  
“What is it?” The sheriff asked.   
  
“We have word of an angel fighting ring.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry, both for the wait and such a short chapter! This was not my intention, I swear. Next chapter almost *has* to be the normal length, if not particularly long. I'm excited for this one! New character and plot line coming up!


	21. Chapter 21

Jody crouched in the back of the van, the only sounds being the engine running, low growls, wheezing, and hoarse coughing. The only occupant of the van - besides Donna, who was driving - was an angel. Rescued from a fighting ring, he was aggressive and agitated. And  _ injured _ . 

The ring bust had occurred in the middle of a fight. The opponent hadn’t survived. It had been shot in the chaos of the bust. This one… Quick information had told them that this ragged, purple-winged angel was the best fighter of the ring. He was experienced, fast, strong…    
  
And right now, he was cuffed, muzzled, and kneeling on the floor of the van, bleeding. He wore a thick choke collar that they hadn’t had time to remove, nor did they try. Nobody wanted to get near him. Before he’d been muzzled, he’d been baring his sharp fangs - some had been replaced by metal implants.

They pulled up to Ellen’s and Jody opened the door from a hidden latch inside, the muzzled angel’s eyes following sharply. She then took hold of his wrist and lead chain with a sharp order of “follow me,” and the angel obediently stood and allowed himself to be led from the van. Donna met her on the other side.

“How’s he doing?” She asked, her voice soft and gentle as she glanced at the angel. His eyes narrowed and his growling got louder until Jody shook his wrist firmly. This wasn’t the first time she’d dealt with a fighting angel. This one was strong and spunky - he didn’t like being restrained, but he was listening for the time being. Likely expecting to be punished if he didn’t. 

“Injured. Argumentative,” Jody replied as she briskly led the angel to the door of Ellen’s. No matter how strong he seemed, he needed medical attention. Quickly. She could feel him beginning to weaken and stumble.    
  
“Ellen! Number one is here!” Jody called this out the moment she pushed through the door. It seemed like it was going well, the angel following docilely. Until he saw another in the lobby.

He tore from Jody’s grasp with a snarl, surprising her with his strength, even injured. He bounded toward the angel - who was cringing away, wide-eyed, until the choke collar Jody held the chain for reached its limit and he jolted to a halt with a pained, choking cry. Against everything Jody believed in, she pulled on the chain to encourage the angel to follow. She had to practically tug him across the floor, as despite the evident choking and lack of air, he kept struggling to attack the angel. When she could, she grabbed hold of his wrist and gave slack on the chain and loosen the collar. The angel coughed hoarsely but, the other angel out of sight, no longer attempted to attack. 

Ellen appeared. “Room 4, it’s already set up and ready,” She was snapping on gloves and Jody dragged the angel to the assigned room. 

“Sit down on the table,” She ordered once they were in. The angel obediently hopped up and waited, cuffed hands resting on his lap. His eyes were flickering around the room and he was wheezing. 

“Let’s get that collar off and see what it’s done to you,” Ellen murmured. She stepped up to the angel and reached to unfasten the collar, but he flinched, growled, and smacked her hands away, glaring at her through narrowed eyes. 

“Sit still!” Jody ordered. Ellen cast a grateful glance at her. She hated yelling at her patients. Owners? Sure. But not the patients, especially when they were wounded.

Obediently, the angel stayed still and allowed Ellen to remove his collar, though he was growling lowly the whole time. He couldn’t bite, but it was still unsettling. Ellen set the collar down next to him, his eyes tracking her movement, and then she took his chin and gently lifted his head. He attempted to wriggle from her touch, but another order from Jody caused him to comply. 

His neck was bruised and pinched, some parts slowly oozing blood. He showed evidence of a shock collar - his neck was burnt and there were four unhealed holes where the shock device would have been. He glared balefully at them as Ellen started to prepare to clean the first of the wounds. She attempted to start to clean them but at the first touch he snarled, hit the supplies from her hand, and hopped backwards off the table, all in one smooth motion. Ellen and Jody looked around the other side. The angel was hunched in a corner on all fours, glaring at them, his ragged wings somewhat flared. 

“There’s no way I’m getting anything done as he is now,” Ellen sighed. “Can you go ask Ash for anesthetic? I don’t want to sedate him in his condition, but I can’t do anything like this.”

“On it,” Jody nodded and left. She returned soon later with a syringe and the angel was sitting back on the table, feathers fluffed as he growled and grumbled. The cuffs were sitting next to him. He was looking at them and, glancing at the humans occasionally, he nudged them off the table, hitting the floor with a  _ clank _ . “Give me your arm,” she ordered. The angel complied and she handed the syringe to Ellen, who injected it into the angel’s arm. He hardly flinched. 

“It’ll take a few minutes for it to take effect,” Ellen murmured as she disposed of the needle. “How many were there?”

“Ten,” Jody replied. “We’re taking five to the other office. The ring was in between cities so we decided to split them up so neither place got overloaded.”

“We’re going to have to find places for them to go. If they’re too misbehaved, though, there may be no point.”

Jody nodded and glanced at the angel. He was sitting cross-legged, a drowsy look in his eyes as the drug took effect. He was blinking slowly and his head was beginning to nod, but he suddenly shook, trying to chase away the drowsiness. As the two women watched, he slid off the table and started pacing, shaking his head and fluffing his feathers. 

“He’s trying to resist it,” Ellen murmured, voicing both of their thoughts. “It’s strong. Should we tell him to sit down?”

“I’d say let him tire himself out. We’d always want him to go down easy, but… I doubt anything’s going to be easy with this one. He was apparently their best fighter.”

“Lovely,” Ellen sighed as they watched the angel continue to huff, wheeze, and pace. “Do you have a name for him?”

“Not yet. We brought some of the people there in, we’re hoping someone will give us information. We’ve still got a crew there, cleaning it out, making sure nobody’s still there.”

The angel’s pacing was slowing and his grumbling was getting quieter. He was pawing at his head, shaking it as he swayed. The drowsy, hazy look in his eyes was overpowering the fight and he staggered across the room. He slowly sunk to his knees then slumped on the floor, the sedative finally having taken effect.

Jody and Ellen worked together to get him on the table. Ellen removed the muzzle now that the angel wasn’t fighting.

“Can you go grab the clipboard? We have to document all of this.”

Jody nodded and picked up a clipboard with multiple sheets of paper. Per Ellen’s instructions, she wrote down every injury listed. 

Overall, after everything was finished, the angel’s torso was littered with sutures and bandages. X-rays showed cracked ribs, crushed trachea, screws as evidence of a formerly broken jaw and fractures in multiple places. One wing had a hairline fracture, as did an arm. Blood had begun to trickle from his mouth thanks to the damage on his throat. Bruises on his arms suggested that he’d been given shots and IVs before.

The angel was resting in a new room, a tracheostomy tube helping him breath. His chest rose and fell with the  _ click-whirr-hiss _ of the machine. An IV tube was in his arm, providing nutrition, hydration, and antibiotics to prevent infection. His fractured wing was wrapped and bound to his body. His jaw had been surgically repaired, with wires holding it shut and new screws in the bone. Monitors beeped and hummed as they tracked his heart rate, breathing rate, oxygen saturation…

He looked as though he were on death row. 

A few hours later, his eyes began to slowly struggle open. Ellen had been coming in and out of the room, taking care of other patients, but she’d been checking on him as much as possible. She’d called Benny after they’d finished patching all the injured ring angels - one had to be put down due to behavior, it was too aggressive and bit Ash. The others were all sedated peacefully, though none had as many injuries as this one. 

His blue eyes sleepily followed her as she walked in. She didn’t say anything to him as she recorded his vitals but, watching him, she could tell he was confused. He lay still but seemed to be assessing his condition. Eventually, his hand lifted to feel at the trach tube. She caught his wrist before he could pull on it.

“Don’t mess with it, it’s helping you breathe,” She told him firmly. His eyes flickered to her face, a hazy, drugged look marring the color. “I know you’re confused and hurting, but you need to listen to me, understand?” Her voice was soft, supposed to be soothing, but his eyes narrowed and he gave her a dark look. 

He tried to sit up, his face twisting in pain. Ellen set a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down, careful not to aggravate his injuries. “Don’t sit up,” She said this more sternly, remembering that Jody had mentioned fighters obeyed commands better. She didn’t often deal with fighters. The angel was tense under her hand but didn’t fight.

Ellen finished writing down what she needed and looked back at the angel. He was still blinking sleepily, but his gaze was flickering around the new room, taking in his surroundings. He didn’t seem like he was trying to open his mouth against the wiring - although with the evidence that he’d broken his jaw in the past, he may find this at least marginally familiar. Enough not to resist at least. 

“Alright, I’ll be back soon,” Ellen told the angel. “I have to go check on other patients.”

The angel watched her leave. The moment the door clicked shut, he sat up, grimacing, and began to methodically pull the tubes from his arms. Serves the human right for not securing them. His handlers knew better than that. He didn’t really understand why humans insisted on putting tubes in him. He was just fine. He won his fights, got the worst of his wounds patched up, then he was left alone in his kennel until the next fight. He didn’t like being taken out. This new - transportation, these unfamiliar humans - Ellen and Jody they’d called each other - he didn’t like it. 

The handlers would be horrifically angry that he’d left. It didn’t matter that he’d been taken. He needed to go back. They may punish him lighter if he returned on his own. 

After the tubes were out of him, he realized his next problem. There was a tube attached to his neck. It was making strange noises and he’d never seen this before. He frowned. It was unfamiliar. Unfamiliar was bad. The end of the tube that wasn’t connected to his throat, he found, was attached to some machine. It allowed him enough mobility to make his way shakily - that wasn’t good - to drawers and cabinets, which he began opening, searching for something to sever the tube. He was unsure how to detach it and didn’t want to just rip it out. 

He found a scalpel in a drawer. It had packaging around it and he struggled to remove it, but he managed then took the tool and sat back on the table. He didn’t know how long it would take, but he began sawing at the material of the tube. He still had a glowing red strip on his finger - this was familiar, somewhat. He knew enough not to take it off yet. It would draw attention that he didn’t want yet.

Time passed. The human - Ellen - didn’t return. He finished detaching the tube. It was noticeably more difficult to breathe, but he would figure that out later. He took a deep breath - that hurt a bit - and pulled the strip off. Monitors began to scream as he quickly took off the last pieces and slipped off the table. He crept out the room - why wasn’t the door locked - and walked on all fours, ignoring the slight pain in his arm - why was it casted - holding the scalpel tightly. His wing - the non-bound one, why was one bound - was arched over his back to protect himself from a sudden attack. He peeked around a corner and his eyes narrowed. “Ellen” was there, as well as another angel. 

The sight of the winged creature drew a growl from his throat - or it would have, had the tube not impeded his ability to make noise. He crept a little closer to take stock of the view before him. The other angel hadn’t seen him yet. After tensing up and shifting slightly, he bounded out of his hiding spot, leaping at the angel - after all, if he attacked first, the other angel couldn’t. 

The angel cringed away from him. The coward. “Ellen” grabbed his arm but, being the same height as her and built like a wall, he was easily able to get her to let go by batting his wing at her face. She was a human. He didn’t attack humans. Once she let go with an unhappy cry, he resumed his attack on the angel. He heard shouting but the thing that caused him to pause was a sharp sensation in his shoulder. He looked to see a syringe poking out of his shoulder, “Jody” holding on to it, pushing something into him. In mere moments, his head went fuzzy then everything went black.

Jody caught the angel as he crumpled, unconscious, from the fast-acting sedative. She dragged the limp form off the other angel - one of Ellen’s patients, Hael. The female angel crawled away, cuts along her face and arms. With the cast covering the fighting angel’s arm, he could only attack with one hand. He couldn’t use his fangs and seemed to have preferred to use a scalpel - which Ellen eased out of his hand. The two women noticed with concern that his breathing was struggling - his trach tube had been severed and his chest was heaving for air - limited in movement due to his broken ribs. His face was already going pale from the lack of air and, wordlessly, they heaved him back to his room.

The trach tube was replaced - thanks to detachable parts - the screaming machines were silenced and reattached and all sharp things were removed from the room. Some time later, a tall Cajun man, irritated and snappy, arrived.

“Thank God, Benny-” Ellen started. The Louisianan cut her off.

“I don’t want to do this, Ellen. You don’t understand. I don’t have the space or time to take on a violent, aggressive angel. Josiah’s coming down with something, Abner’s going through withdrawals, and Bart’s still doped up on meds. Not to mention that I was going to do one of the last assessments for Becca to be released and I need to retest Josh’s flight. I’ve got an audit coming up at the restaurant and I still need to get everything in order for that. Ellen, I  _ can’t _ take this one on.”

“Just come see him? Please?” Benny sighed and allowed himself to be led to the angel’s room. He was lying supine on the table again, breathing in time with a machine. He was peacefully sedated, an anesthetic dripping through his replaced IV to keep him that way. 

“I’ve already called state rehab programs,” Jody told him, having joined them. “There were ten angels that made it out, including one that had to be put down. I’ve gotten housing for the other eight, but everywhere else refuses to take this one. We’ve finally got a name for him - Gadreel. He was their best fighter, we’ve been told.”

“Lovely,” Benny sighed, arms crossed. “So not only do you want me to take an angel with behavior problems, you want me to take the strongest fighter. Thanks, guys.”

“Benny, we don’t want you to have to take him,” Ellen cut in. “But you’re his last chance. If you don’t take him, that’s it. We’ll be forced to put him down. He needs help, maybe his behaviors could be changed, but nowhere will help him. He needs you, or he’s dead.”

Benny felt his face whiten. His jaw shifted as, just as expected when given this ultimatum, his conviction wavered.

“ _ Goddammit _ ,” He growled. “Fine. I’ll take him. But the moment he tries to attack one of my angels, he’s done. I’m not putting my patients in danger.”

“That’s understandable,” Ellen sighed. She was just glad she didn’t have to euthanize another angel. “He won’t be going with you anyway, not for a few weeks. Not until the trach is out and he can breathe on his own.”

“Good,” Benny sighed. “That might give me time to get Becca situated and out, maybe a bit more space. I’ll have to switch around schedules with employees, pull some of my own time back so I can focus on the angels, work on those courses. I’ve been slacking on them…” He pushed his hands in his pockets. “Has he been awake at all? How’s he behaving?”

“He was mostly fine. Irritable, grumpy, but that makes sense. He’s been ripped out of everywhere and everything he knows. It’s strange for him. Ah, but you may want to keep other angels out of his sight,”

“What did he do?”

Ellen pursed her lips, avoiding Benny’s gaze.

“Ellen…”

“He snuck out of his room earlier. He found a scalpel, sliced the trach tube, snuck out, and… Attacked another angel. The angel’s fine - just a bit cut up. He couldn’t really do anything - his jaw’s wired so he can’t bite and he’s only got use of one arm and wing. His hand was occupied with the scalpel so he couldn’t claw at the angel - it could have been so much worse.”

Benny’s head turned slowly. “I’m not looking for ‘ _ so much worse _ ,’” He growled. “If he’s already attacked one angel -”

“Two.”

“ _ What _ !?”

“He lunged at another as he was being brought in. He was still wearing a choke collar at that point so nothing happened.”

“ _ Goddammit Ellen _ !” It was rare that Benny lost his temper. But it was getting close. “You’re asking me to take an aggressive, violent angel that’s already attacked two angels and house him among  _ multiple other angels _ and expect nothing is going to happen!? Are you out of your mind!?”

“Benny, just give him a chance!” Ellen begged. “Look at him! If you don’t at least  _ try _ to help him, he’s dead. Just… give it a week? Give him a week with you, if he doesn’t improve or show any change, then I won’t argue with you. Please?”

Benny sighed. “You know it’s going to take more than a week to see any change. Behavior cases always take a while. But -” He ran a hand over his face. “I’ll take him. I already said that. Perhaps he may be a bit better when he’s not wounded, drugged, and in pain. Maybe he’ll calm down a bit and we can explain what’s going on.”

“Thank you,” Ellen whispered. “Thank you. I owe you, Benny, I really do.”

“Just… Make sure the worst of his wounds are healed before you release him. I don’t need him suddenly going septic or something.”

“You know I wouldn’t let that happen,”

Benny didn’t reply, instead taking a better look at the unconscious angel. He seemed peaceful.

“You said his jaw was wired,” He mentioned. “What’s the full list?”

Ellen passed him a clipboard with all of his wounds documented - they needed specific notes when it came to fighting angels - should a case be taken to court, the files would help as evidence. Benny scanned it as he looked at the angel. 

His bare torso showed that he was strong. Lean. Muscular. His lower half was covered by a pair of soft clean pants - they’d been changed from the rough dingy gray material he’d arrived in. His jaw was set almost defiantly due to the wiring holding it shut. He had stitched cuts over his eyebrow and on his cheek and his head was tipped slightly back. The trach in his neck was surrounded by bandages from the surgery to put it in, then more bandages for burns and punctures. His torso was cut up and stitched, with the signature nasty bruising of broken ribs. Bruises littered his arm - presumably IV and shot bruising. He was covered in scars, some pale and faded, some very vivid and recent. 

Unconscious, he looked hurt and sad and that was exactly one of Benny’s weaknesses. He couldn’t keep saying no.

“Crap. Fine. I’ll take him,” He shook his head. “I’m gonna head out and get stuff dealt with so I can get everything prepared.

“Thank you, Benny,” Ellen said again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Benny waved. “I’m not doing it for you, you know that.”

“I know, you never do it for the people,” Ellen was smiling slightly. “You’re just a big softie. You don’t want to see any angels hurting.”

Benny shook his head as he left, in a somewhat better mood than when he arrived. Ellen returned her attention to the sleeping angel.

“You need to behave, Gadreel,” She sighed softly. “Or, depending on what you do, Benny will never forgive me. Or you, for that matter.”


	22. Chapter 22

Three weeks later, Ellen was sitting in Gadreel’s room. The trach had been taken out about a week ago, but they’d kept him in to ensure that the source healed correctly. He was still wheezy - there was a chance he would never quite breathe correctly again. 

Ellen was sitting next to the sedated angel, running her fingers through his hair, petting him as she waited for him to come out of the sedation - Benny was coming to pick him up today and though they’d been giving him more awake spells, he was still aggressive, on edge, and erratic. He spent much of his waking time sitting sleepily, likely unaware of his surroundings. He was often groggy and watched dully as they redressed his wounds. He hadn’t acted out again except once, where an angel had passed in front of his door, which was cracked slightly open to allow him to see something slightly different besides his room. They would have kept him in the kennels, with the other overnight animals, had he not been so volatile. With the extra equipment he’d needed, it had been easier to cordon off a room. 

A soft huff drew her out of her thoughts just moments before a hand smacked hers away. Still lying on his back, Gadreel glared at Ellen, his lips pulled back to reveal his fangs as he snarled silently. He likely wouldn’t be vocalize for some time but his intent was clear. The sleepy, drugged look lingered in his eyes as he glared at Ellen, but the fight seemed to drain out of him and his head fell back with a soft sigh, eyes falling closed again. He looked like he would slip back off to sleep. He often did. He didn’t fight the sedatives anymore, but that could have been due to the fact that he was rarely entirely lucid and fully awake.

It was unpleasant, but the action was necessary. For safety.

"We're not going to make you fall back asleep today," Ellen started. Gadreel's gaze flickered in her direction. He didn't look her in the eye, she'd noticed, instead looking just past her or around her neck. Likely a learned behavior. "You're going somewhere else. The new person taking care of you, his name is Benny. He's going to help you get healthier and learn to feel better."

A frown crossed Gadreel's face. He seemed… Confused. 

"You'll meet him later today," Ellen continued. "He's coming to pick you up today."

Gadreel just looked at her and she sighed softly. "You don't understand, do you? I'll just go grab you something to eat."

With that, she stood up and left, locking the door behind her. She returned to find Gadreel much more awake and standing, trying to open the locked cabinets. At the sound of the door unlocking, he spun around, teeth bared. He relaxed marginally when he saw that it was Ellen, and relaxed slightly more when he saw the cup in her hand. 

With his jaw being wired, he couldn't eat solid food. He had been getting nutrition through his IV but he'd pulled at the tube so much that as soon as he didn't need it, they'd taken it out. He'd managed to pull it out even after they covered his hands with mittens and used a supersticky cover. Ellen was unwilling to use a feeding tube when he was going to leave to go to Benny's soon, so once the IV was out, they'd moved to giving him smoothies that he could drink. Ellen had taken to lacing them with pain medication, which he didn't seem to notice, and kept him from getting even more agitated from pain. He was constantly on guard and if there was one thing they could get past him, she'd take it. 

He seemed to do well with a more regimented food schedule - a smoothie soon after he woke up and another right before they dosed him again. He reached out to take the drink and Ellen handed it over. He sniffed it before taking a sip, decided it was good enough, and drank it quickly, watching Ellen as though she would take it away. He handed the cup back without being asked when he was finished and watched as she set it down. He looked more aware and awake in his actions. 

He jumped and bared his teeth at a soft knock on the door. He watched as Ellen walked over and opened it slightly. He backed up and glared as someone new entered the room. He’d never seen this one before. It was a man, taller than he was, and strong-looking.

Gadreel didn’t like him.

The new human exchanged a few words with Ellen then turned to step closer to Gadreel. The angel stood still, tense and defensive. 

“Hello, Gadreel, is that your name? I’m Benny.” The human - Benny - extended his hand. Gadreel, believing he meant to hit him, flinched away, teeth bared. When the hit didn’t come, he cracked open an eye to see the hand staying there, held level. He smacked it away with a silent growl and whipped past the human, glaring behind him as hid easily behind the table he slept on, folding himself up small so he could fit.

“He’s been… Skittish around humans,” Ellen told Benny, giving him a sympathetic look. “He refuses to let anybody touch him. We’ve been keeping him sedated so he doesn’t act out, but even when he’s drugged and tired, he won’t let anyone stand behind him.”

“He’s on guard - he doesn’t want to be attacked or leave himself vulnerable,” Benny murmured. Then he changed the subject - “Do you have his file?”

“I do, but it’s in another room. Do you-”

“Go ahead and grab it, might as well give him some alone time with me,” Benny replied. Ellen nodded and slipped out, closing the door behind her. But, noticeably, she didn’t lock it. Gadreel’s eyes narrowed at the implication of this action.

“I know you don’t know who I am,” Benny started speaking. Gadreel let out a soft hiss at the sound of his voice, still hunched up in the little crevice between the wall and table. “But I promise you can trust me. I will not hurt you. I’m taking you to a new place but it’s so you can recover, perhaps unlearn some of your behaviors. Maybe you’ll someday be able to find owners that will treat you well.”

Gadreel didn’t understand most of what Benny was saying but his tone angered him - gentle, soft. That was stupid. You got nowhere by being soft. Being soft was how you got killed.

The door opened and Ellen came back in, carrying the folder that Gadreel was beginning to realize was in reference to him - when Ellen and “Ash” were talking about him, they would look through the folder and glance at him occasionally.

“Bring him back in about a week to get the wrap off and his jaw unwired, and another week to get the cast off his arm,” Ellen told Benny. “You know to call me whenever he may show signs of infection or illness.”

Benny nodded absently as he flipped through the folder. “You have him on Prota-Mix?”

“It’s while he can’t eat solid foods,” Ellen replied. “He seems to like the strawberry flavor most. He flipped the orange one out of my hand, he definitely doesn’t like it. I’ve been blending strawberries and his pain meds into it, the less pills I have to try to force into him the better. He’ll take the pills but he looks like he wants to bite me the whole time.”

Benny glanced at Gadreel and the way his eyes glowed from the small gap. “He looks like he wants to bite you all the time.”

“That’s true,”

“What size are you giving him?”

“20 ounces at a time. He’s been getting them just as he wakes up and before he gets put back under, but with you not sedating him, the schedule will be a bit different.”

“How far apart is that?”

“We’ve been waking him up about every four hours so he can get up and move around, maybe get more used to being away from the rings. We’ve been keeping him awake between a half hour to an hour, depending on his behavior. He’d been really agitated for a while but he seems to be calming down - somewhat,” Ellen glanced in Gadreel’s direction. “He doesn’t usually hide.”

“...Right,” Benny paused. “Do you have a pair of shoes for him? I don’t want him walking around outside or in my kitchen barefoot. Also, there were angels out in the lobby as I came in, how do you propose I take him to the van? Blindfold, hood…? You know I don’t like either option, but…”

“I’ve got a hood and shoes somewhere, I’ll go grab them,” And Ellen was gone again, returning soon after with the hood and shoes. “Gadreel, sit on the table,” She ordered. The angel extracted himself from the small gap and complied. “You want to go now?” She asked. Benny shrugged.

“I don’t see a point in staying or waiting,” He replied. Ellen first knelt down to slip the shoes of Gadreel’s feet, the angel watching her, brow furrowed in confusion. When she released his first foot, he lifted it to regard the shoe with curiosity. As Ellen worked to get the other shoe, he pulled at the laces of the first, eventually undoing them and pulled the shoe off to hold it and turn it over, frowning as he looked at it. His head tipped slightly as he sniffed it then looked at it again, pulling the laces and putting his hand in it. This all happened as Ellen put the other shoe on him and when she finished and noticed that he’d pulled the first one off, she gently pulled it out of his hands.

Ellen laughed and even Benny grinned as Gadreel watched with evident confusion as Ellen put the shoe back on. She backed away and he lifted his feet, staring at them, making soft, hoarse confused little squeaks and noises as he kicked his feet, staring in confusion and wonder as they didn’t come off. He pulled his foot closer to tug on the shoe again, ignoring the pain that had to have been going through his ribs in the stead of curiosity and confusion. 

Benny reached forward and pulled Gadreel’s foot from his grasp, nudging his leg to hang off the side of the table again. “Try to walk around some,” He suggested. Gadreel seemed to be too occupied in staring at the shoes to find offense in his gentler tone and simply looked up at him. The angel eventually slid off the table and stopped, eyes wide. He stared down at his feet and lifted one and gingerly placed it back down. He frowned and did this again. And again. Then he looked up at them and pointed down at his feet. 

“You’re wearing shoes,” Ellen explained. Gadreel tipped his head again with another confused noise - he didn’t seem to have heard the term before. He took a tentative step forward then jolted back. He tried this again then walked a path around the room, shaking his feet as though he were trying to dislodge the shoes, which were tied securely on his feet. He looked at Benny and Ellen again, head tipped, a questioning look on his face.

“You’re going to go outside and they’re going to protect your feet,” Benny told him. Gadreel returned his gaze to the shoes, kicking his feet out. 

“Alright, back on the table,” Ellen ordered. Gadreel performed his high-stepping shuffle back to the table and heaved himself up, staring down at his feet and kicking his heels against the table. She then held up the hood, pausing as Gadreel bared his teeth in a growl, then suddenly stopped, closing his eyes and bowing his head a little. Ellen glanced at Benny then fastened the hood over Gadreel’s head, covering his eyes and securing it. The angel’s entire demeanor changed after that. He sat with his head slightly tipped, he seemed unsure of his footing when Ellen told him to get down from the table - all his former confidence seemed to have been stripped away. 

He flinched slightly when Benny took his elbow but allowed himself to be tugged forward, placing his feet carefully, tentatively. His earlier confusion of the shoes seemed to have melted away. Now unable to see and feel the ground underneath him, he was uncertain of his movements, completely trusting Benny not to let him run into anything. The man slowly led the fighter outside, where his head lifted and he sniffed the air. Benny let him for a moment before gently nudging him forward, taking him to the van. He helped Gadreel into the back, where he thought the angel would be more comfortable, then went around to the front.

The drive to the restaurant went smoothly - much better than Benny was expecting. Gadreel hardly moved, resting his hands on his lap and sitting stock-still, staring straight ahead. He was tense but he didn’t make any complaints and he didn’t try to mess with the hood - Benny thought perhaps the ring used hoods. It made him sick to think that they were taking advantage of the conditioning they’d done in the ring.

Benny parked in the back and urged Gadreel out of the van, leading him to the back door that went through the kitchen. The angel flinched slightly at the noise - it was the middle of the day and the kitchen was busy. 

Benny frowned as he caught sight of bright red and let go of Gadreel, weaving through moving bodies to - “Bart! What are you doing down here?”

Bart turned with a smile. “I’m fine, Benny! Cast is off, I can get back to work!”

“No, Bart, you need to rest, you’re still healing!”

As Benny fretted over Bart, he hadn’t realized that he’d left Gadreel standing, stock-still in the doorway of the kitchen. The wounded angel’s mind was spinning.

He didn’t understand what was going on. His nose was packed full of scents, primarily  _ angel _ . And he couldn’t see. And it was loud, he was suddenly left alone, deprived of arguably his most important sense and - 

Oh no.

He was bait.

It made sense. That  _ had _ to be it. He was too wounded and they were making him bait. He had to get the hood off and fight, they wouldn’t keep him as bait if he fought and showed them he was still a good fighter. They’d handicapped him too - they took his sight and his feet and immobilized a wing and arm. With his non-casted arm - he couldn’t move the other enough - he scrambled to reach to the back of his head and undo the clasps on the hood. It took a long time - too long - and his blood was roaring in his ears by the time he managed to get it off. It took him only a split second to survey the room - four humans, three angels. The humans were likely watching to see - would he win, would he be worth healing, worth throwing back in the ring? The three angels were evidently his opponents. They didn’t look like fighters. They were older than most fighters. That didn’t matter.

His eyes quickly scanned them -  _ That one _ . Obviously, the weakest would be the one with only one arm - why would they want an incomplete angel fighting? He would die in a heartbeat. With a silent snarl, Gadreel went on the attack.

A call alerted Benny and he turned his head in time to see Gadreel lunging at him. Or, more likely, Bart. He shoved the red-winged angel behind him and swiftly caught Gadreel, wrapping him in his arms, pinning the angel's good arm and carefully avoiding the cast. Gadreel fought and struggled, trying to bat his wing to get out as he silently snarled at Bart, who didn't help the matter any. 

The one-armed angel was spreading and angling his wings, a low growl building in his throat as he stood tall. He was a few inches shorter than Gadreel but his intent was clear. Benny had read about this in his angel psychology courses. 

Bart was getting territorial. He viewed Gadreel as a threat. Gadreel, conditioned to fight any angel he saw, saw Bart as a threat. 

"Elizabeth, grab the hood and get it on him?" Benny called, his tone making the order a question. "He can't bite, if you're worried about that. Bart, everyone else, get out for a bit."

The group of people scrambled to obey as Elizabeth - head cook under Bart and Benny - hurried to grab the hood. When Gadreel saw it, he leaned away from it. He kept struggling and twisting in Benny's hold, eyes squeezing shut as frightened squeaks escaped him.

"Hold  _ still _ ," Elizabeth grumbled, exasperated. Gadreel didn't listen, still struggling, until she snapped, "quit moving!"

He froze and allowed her to slide to hood over his eyes. As his vision was blocked, he stiffened. Benny carefully released him and, when he was sure the angel wouldn't try to take the hood back off, stepped farther away from him. When contact was severed with Gadreel, the angel's head swivelled and he spun around as though he were searching. Benny reached to take his arm, perhaps calm him a bit, but at the slightest touch, Gadreel jumped back. Benny kept his grip firm and Gadreel eventually stopped trying to pull away. 

A spoon slid from a precarious position and clattered on the ground, causing Gadreel to flinch with a squeak, wing puffing as his head swivelled, searching for the source of the noise. He was entirely different from any way he’d behaved before.

He was scared.

This, Benny knew. He wasn’t sure why Gadreel was scared, but - thinking about it - he’d left him sightless in a room full of angels and noises, then when he got the hood off, he likely did as he was trained. Then the hood was back on. The angel was probably confused and scared and would calm down when he was taken to his room.

Benny gently tugged on his arm and, after a bit of resistance, Gadreel followed. He placed his feet very carefully, uncertain about every movement. 

“We’re coming up on some stairs,” Benny spoke softly so as not to startle the angel further. Gadreel’s lips lifted in a snarl at the tone but seemed to understand. Benny paused in front of the stairs, told Gadreel they were there, and they started going up the narrow staircase. It was a slow, stumbling affair, Gadreel stubbing his shoe-covered toes on the stairs when he didn’t lift his feet enough, but they made it up. Benny helped him down the hallway, Gadreel’s head swivelling as he smelled  _ angel angel angel _ , seeming to grow even more tense. There was some chatter coming from the common room and Gadreel’s head turned in that direction as he subtly inched away from it. Benny tugged him forward again and he followed. The man stopped in front of the last door - despite his dislike for using the room and that Rebecca’s now had an empty bed, he’d decided to use it thanks to Gadreel’s aggression. He couldn’t keep him with Duma and he  _ definitely _ wasn’t going to keep him with Abner.

Benny opened the door and flipped the light switch on. After closing the door behind him, he let Gadreel go.

“Let’s get that hood off, yeah?” He murmured. Gadreel flinched back at his touch, lips lifted in a snarl, but allowed Benny to undo the clasps. He blinked as the hood was pulled off and looked around, a frown settling on his face. Even more unfamiliar surroundings. Lovely. Unfamiliar was bad. “This is your room,”

Room? His? That didn’t make sense. Gadreel didn’t have a  _ room _ . He had his cold little cell, with his thin blanket and his stockpile of stolen gum hidden in a crack in the wall. He didn’t have a room with - he didn’t even know what most of these things were. This room was like twice the size of his cell. It was so spacious. He frowned at Benny. He, like the other new handlers, seemed to be quite incompetent and ridiculous. Bait angels didn’t get  _ rooms _ . They weren’t even housed alone. 

“Well, go ahead and sit down, we’ll get your shoes off,” Benny told him. Gadreel looked around for something to sit on - what was there? And decided to sit on something he didn’t see purpose for - then his eyes widened as it gave way underneath him. He looked at Benny, confused.

“What, you’ve never seen a bed before?” The human asked as he knelt in front of Gadreel, taking hold of his ankle, causing him to flinch, then pulled the shoe onto his leg, pulling the knot in the laces out. Gadreel watched as Benny did this then pulled the shoe off, freeing his toes from the cramped space. He decided, as Benny set the shoes neatly next to the “bed” that he didn’t like them. They were cramped and didn’t let him feel the ground.

The moment Gadreel felt he could without risking punishment, he pulled his feet from Benny’s grasp and hopped off the “bed”. He moved a few paces away, never turning his back to Benny, and began investigating one of the other structures in the room. 

“Right, well…” Benny sighed slightly at the angel’s apparent inattentiveness at his presence. “I’ll be back in ten to twenty minutes with food, so…”

Gadreel glanced at him for only a second before he continued running his finger over the desk’s smooth surface. Benny kind of shrugged and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him and making sure it latched. Ellen had been locking the door she’d said but… Benny didn’t want to lock Gadreel up. He was trying to help him, not contain him. 

After the door shut, Gadreel immediately went to test if it was locked. It wasn’t. He had no interest to explore - yet. He had enough to investigate here right now. He watched the door for a few moments then looked around. What was he supposed to do? What did they expect of him? This was all unfamiliar, he didn’t understand. He didn’t like that.

Benny returned some amount of time later and -  _ Finally _ , something vaguely familiar. He carried a cup that smelled like the same drink Ellen gave him. Gadreel, now standing behind the “bed”, watched him with narrow eyes as he came in. Benny stood on the side of the bed opposite of Gadreel and held the drink out to Gadreel.

“Do you want it?” He asked. Gadreel debated not taking it but his throat and arm were beginning to twinge in pain and he knew Ellen had snuck painkillers in it - Perhaps Benny did the same. Gadreel took the drink from Benny and sniffed it. It smelled somewhat different. He took a tentative sip, watching Benny carefully.

Benny sighed in relief as Gadreel seemed to decide that the drink was safe. He’d been worried that the angel would have noticed he’d put pain meds and a low-dose sedative in - an attempt to maybe relax him a bit. Gadreel watched Benny with a guarded expression as he finished the drink. He handed the cup back to Benny and hid away again. 

“I’ll be back in about an hour or so, but if you need me, make some sort of noise, okay?” Benny spoke in the direction Gadreel had gone - he could see the angel peeking out from under the bed. Considering his height and bulk, he could fit in some really small spaces, especially with that cast on his arm.

Gadreel watched Benny leave through narrowed eyes. He didn’t hear the lock click. That was strange. Wherever he went, his handlers locked him up. Why was this one not? Was he that stupid? He watched the door in case Benny decided to come back. He didn’t. After some amount of time - Gadreel didn’t know, nor did he care - he decided that Benny wouldn’t return. Not for some time. He’d begun to feel drowsy by then and paced around, rubbing at his eyes. He’d learned the difference between naturally sleepy and a drugged sleep, and this felt like the latter. However, he didn’t want to sleep. He wasn’t comfortable here, he couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t try to harm him in some way.

He was also somewhat confused on their intentions for him. If they were testing if he was still able to fight, he needed to keep in shape - and he’d not been able to for however long he’d been at Ellen’s. They’d kept him drowsy and asleep. He needed to exercise hard to make up for that. And so, resisting the pull of drugs, that’s what he started doing. They had always expected him to work out on his own between training sessions - he wouldn’t treat this any differently. 

He was somewhat out of breath when the door clicked open. He stood up, a fine sheen of sweat covering him. He’d been doing one-armed push ups at the time, unable to do full ones thanks to the cast. Benny poked his head in. 

“You doing okay?” He asked. Gadreel stared at him. Why did he care? After a few moments, Benny seemed unnerved by the silence. “Well, I want you to feel comfortable,” He slipped in the room, gently closed the door, then moved over to sit on the bed, pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged. Gadreel noticed that he’d taken off his “shoes”, but his feet seemed to be covered in a type of cloth. 

“Ignore me, do whatever you were doing before,” Benny waved a hand. Gadreel looked at him and frowned. Why would he…? Whatever. Gadreel walked around the corner of the bed, watching Benny carefully. His body language was wide-open and… Trusting? Strange. Handlers weren’t trusting. They were careful and mean.

Benny was obviously new at this. 

Gadreel stepped cautiously past him, ears pricked to catch any sound the human made. He started investigating the furniture again, confused as to what its purpose was - he’d never had anything like this before and he didn’t understand the point of it. Flat surface?

“That’s called a desk,” Benny spoke up. Gadreel glanced at him. Desk? Why… “It’s used to store stuff and a surface to write on.” 

Writing? What was that?

Gadreel turned back to the “desk”, fiddling with knobs on it. As he did so, Benny watched him, assessing his body language. He was still quite tense and definitely not at ease. That wasn’t a surprise - after all, he came from a place where he likely fought for his life on a regular basis, how could he be calm or at ease like that? It would likely be ages before he felt marginally comfortable here.

Benny watched as Gadreel’s ears perked up and flicked down again as he investigated the desk. The angel’s pointed ears were notched, one missing the tip and had a ring in it. Benny thought it was maybe for identification. 

Seeing Gadreel like this, ears twitching, made Benny wonder why Dean had never mentioned them before. He knew his friend had very little experience with angels and likely didn’t know that their ears were like a cat’s - pointed and able to twitch and move. Not with the same dexterity, but still functional. It helped a lot, to tell what they were thinking or their mood.

Benny had been concerned about Gadreel’s level of interest in things - lethargy and uncaring was usually a sign of sickness or disease in angels - although, he couldn’t really expect Gadreel to be in the best health, considering where he came from. But he seemed interested enough to pull drawers open and ruffle through their contents - Benny had put some paper and crayons in earlier but considering the way Gadreel looked at the crayon, he didn’t seem to know what it was. The angel sniffed it and frowned. With his back turned to Benny, the human couldn’t see what he was really doing as he nibbled on the colorful thing. It didn’t taste very good. That wasn’t new, though, but he didn’t really feel like messing with this new thing he didn’t know yet. He replaced it in the ‘desk’ and moved on, opening a new part of it.

His head shot up and he whipped around, teeth bared, as Benny shifted. He edged away when he saw that Benny hadn’t got any closer, gaze flickering distrustingly. His wing ruffled and ears slightly flattened, he glared at Benny, the human gazing calmly back at him. Growling softly and hoarsely, the angel crept around the room and disappeared under the bed again. After a few moments of waiting, Benny slid off the bed and bent down to look underneath. Gadreel’s narrowed eyes reflected the light like a cat’s - unsurprising, given their extreme similarity. 

“Hey, can you come out of there?” Benny asked softly, laying on his back and looking at Gadreel. The angel was bundled up against the wall, glaring at him. “Come on, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help you, honestly. I know you’ve gone through some terrible stuff, but -  _ Ow _ !”

As Benny spoke, his tone angering Gadreel even more, he’d begun to reach under the bed. The angel, pushed to his limits, his newfound safe space being invaded, his hand flashed out, claws sharp, and scratched harshly against Benny’s hands, breaking the skin easily. Once the action was done, he flinched back even more, curling up on himself as Benny yanked his hand back to look at the scratches.

Gadreel huddled under the bed, his wing wrapping around himself as he cringed away from Benny. He was shaking slightly, eyes squinted as he expected retaliation. To his great confusion, though, Benny just sighed as he looked at the bleeding cuts. 

“I’ll leave you alone,” The human murmured as he stood up, causing the bundled-up angel to flinch away even more. Mystified, Gadreel squinted as he watched Benny’s feet move toward the door. He left, closing it softly. 

Gadreel stayed under the bed for a while later, until he was positive Benny wouldn’t return. He was confused. Why hadn’t he retaliated? Gotten mad? His good hand strayed to run his finger along a deep scar on his torso. 

He wasn’t supposed to hurt humans.


	24. Chapter 24

Benny sighed softly as he looked at his hand again. He really shouldn’t have pushed Gadreel like that, he should have recognized that the angel was stressed. But that was a little over a week ago and the scratches had been healing well. He’d tried to let Gadreel know that he wasn’t going to be harmed for scratching him, but he wasn’t very sure the message had come across right when he’d dragged him from his room, put the hood and shoes on him, and took him back to Ellen’s. It had been time for him to get his wing unwrapped and jaw unwired - both were healing well. 

Benny was walking down the hallway with Gadreel’s next meal - basically a nutrient- and calorie-packed protein shake, designed specifically for angels who couldn’t eat solid foods. Produced by who else but AngeliCo. He’d slowly work Gadreel up to solid foods, but right now his jaw had to be sore and aching. He was planning, however, to start him on different liquids and soft foods than just strawberry shakes.

He knocked on the fighter’s door, giving him warning that he was about to come in. He didn’t want to startle the angel. He turned the doorknob, opened the door, then paused.

The room was a wreck. The bed had been pushed towards the wall, the desk in between the bed and wall. Shreds of blankets littered the floor and he thought he saw filling from a pillow amongst the cloth pieces. Deep scratches gouged the wall at one part, a collection of lighter gashes in a corner. Tattered purple feathers lay discarded in corners, but they looked so damaged that Benny suspected they weren’t from self mutilation.

Which was good, considering destruction of habitat was a clear sign of a stressed, understimulated angel. As was self mutilation.

At the sound of the door opening, Gadreel’s head popped up from the wall side of the bed, another shred of blanket on his head. He narrowed his eyes at Benny and crawled out to take the cup from his hand. Benny handed it over easily and the angel retreated to the corner, ducking out of sight.

As he waited for the cup to be returned to him, Benny reflected on the past week. Gadreel had been regularly sneaking out of his room and attacking - or trying to attack - the other angels. Many times, someone had seen him and stopped him, getting him to return to his room. Thank god for Elizabeth - for some reason, she was good with Gadreel. He seemed to listen to her. Granted, he obeyed every human without question, but he seemed more willing to do what Elizabeth said. Perhaps it was her no-nonsense attitude and refusal to treat Gadreel like he was broken. He was misbehaving and she would let him know that with a sharp order to go to his room that had him jumping to obey.

Benny wasn’t sure how good it was for him, but… It was a difficult situation. He didn’t want to risk making Gadreel even more irritated and aggressive, but he needed to keep his other angels safe.

He knew he had to get Gadreel to stop sneaking out, it was getting out of hand. It had happened at least once - sometimes twice - a day, and he’d only been here a week. Benny was debating putting a lock on the door. He absolutely despised the idea but he couldn’t think of any other way to get Gadreel to stay put while he tried to assess his mental state and formulate some kind of treatment plan.

Already, Benny was prepared to say that Gadreel was the toughest patient he’d had.

A low growl rumbled as the cup rolled out from under the bed. As Benny bent to pick it up, he glanced in the direction it came from and found Gadreel’s eyes glinting back. The angel was giving him a dark look and, slightly unsettled, Benny straightened up quickly. 

“I’m gonna clean some of this mess up,” He told Gadreel. “Why did you tear up your blankets anyway?”

Gadreel snarled as Benny started picking up the blanket strips and the human turned to find the angel half out from under the bed, face twisted angrily and he crouched low on all fours like a gremlin. Gadreel growled at Benny, eyes dark and fierce as they raked up and down his body and a small smirk - hardly noticeable - twitched slightly on the angel’s lips. Benny realized that the angel was prepared to fight him for the blanket pieces and he quickly dropped them, unnerved by the fact that he’d just been sized up by an angel six inches shorter than him. Gadreel didn’t calm down, however, until Benny stepped away from the cloth. 

"Okay, okay, I'll leave it alone," Benny lifted his hands in surrender. Gadreel cringed back at the motion, watching his hands move through squinted eyes. Benny noticed -  _ he thought he was going to be hit _ \- and slowly put his hands down. Then he took a step back. “Look, I’ll leave you alone. I thought I’d check on you. I’ll be back with your next meal, okay?”

Gadreel silently watched as Benny left, closing the door softly. He squinted in confusion and, after a few seconds, crept to the door and opened it enough for him to peek out, watching Benny walk down the hallway. He closed it softly and frowned at the floor. Why hadn’t Benny hit him? He’d threatened him. He  _ looked  _ like he would hit him.

Benny sighed as he flopped into the rolling chair in his office. He didn’t have to be in the restaurant today - Elizabeth had practically forced him to take an off-day. He needed it to figure out a treatment plan for Gadreel. And to update his files on Rebecca, now that she was gone. And to sit with Abner, since he was still going through withdrawals, shaky and sick. And to see if Josiah’s fever had gone down -

“Benny?” He looked up to see Bart standing in the doorway. “You look stressed. What’s on your mind?”

Benny rubbed a hand over his face. “No more than usual. I’m okay, Bart. You need something?”

Bart stepped inside the office and pulled a chair out of the corner. “There’s something, Benny, don’t lie to me. I don’t really need anything, though. Ab’s finally sleeping. Josi’s fever is getting lower. He said he was feeling better. He managed to keep down some soup. Bethy’s teaching Duma how to cook a little. Li and Adina are helping out downstairs too.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah. Does that help?”

“Bart-” Benny cut off with a laugh. “Of course it helps. You know that it does,”

Bart gave Benny a crooked grin as he kicked his feet up on Benny’s desk. “I know it does. You’ve been stressed.”

Benny shook his head and nudged Bart’s feet off the desk. “That  _ is  _ true. I’ve got a lot of stuff I haven’t gotten done.”

“Is it related to Gadreel?”

Benny glanced at him. Whenever he’d seen the ragged, wounded angel, Bart had made his dislike of him quite clear.

“Some of it.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“Not with Gadreel,” Bart made a motion for Benny to explain and the human sighed. “I have to make a treatment plan for him, figure out milestones for his recovery. But I can’t figure him out. I think he’s scared and confused but then he seems aggressive and uncontrolled - I don’t really know what to do with him. He’s possessive and territorial but then he isn’t but then he is and it’s confusing.”

Bart nodded slowly. “Need any help? Maybe I could talk to him?”

Benny stared at Bart. “Kid, you hate the guy, why would you want to talk to him?”

Bart shrugged uncomfortably. “I dunno, I just thought I’d try to help…”

“Redbird, you’ve helped a lot. More than enough. Thanks to you, all I have to do right now is finish up Becca’s files and work on Gadreel’s plan. Really, you helped a lot already. Don’t worry about doing something you don’t want to do just to help me out.”

Bart nodded and shrugged at this. “If you say so,”

“I do,” Benny leaned over to ruffle the angel’s hair. “Why don’t you go to the roof, stretch your wings a bit?”

Bart nodded slowly. “Might fly around a bit.”

“Not too much, don’t wear yourself out,” Benny told him sternly. “I don’t want you crashing again.”

“Right,” Bart laughed a little. “Yeah, I don’t want that happening again,” He leaned back in his chair, balancing on two legs. “The colors still haven’t gone away,”

“Synesthesia from meds?”

“Mhmm,” 

Benny turned in his swivel chair and ruffled through a drawer, pulling out a packet and skimming through it. “Looks like lasting synesthesia can be a side effect of the meds you were on. It’s not permanent, but it’ll stick around for a bit. I think I saw that when Ellen prescribed it, but by then I was just scrambling for something you didn’t react badly to,”

“It’s not a problem,” Bart murmured. “It’s kind of funny to see colors floating around at every feeling.”

“What’s right now?”

“What color is it?” Benny hummed confirmation. “Kinda… Reddish-purple. It’s been more purple since I got off the meds and I’ve been sore. Varying degrees of course, never solid. Not like it had been.”

“That’s good at least. Hey…”

“Yeah?”

“How… What happened when you crashed? You’ve always been wonderful at flying, you’ve flown in worse storms than that and you only got a bit blown around.”

Bart’s mouth twisted and he let the chair plunk back on all four feet as he leaned forward in thought. “I’m not really sure. I don’t remember it all that well. It all went by super fast, you know? But…”

“But?”

“So, it’s all funky air things and I’ve done a bit of research into it, but you know how we were on that one airplane and there was turbulence?”

“Yeah?”

“So I’ve had that before. You know, flying over pavement and the air gets bumpy because of the heat rising and all that, but this time was different. I must have hit a big air pocket under my wing or something cause I felt this like…  _ Force _ under one wing. Not both or it just would have boosted me up kind of roughly. But under one, it just kinda spun me really hard and then I couldn’t stop. It probably has something to do with a storm in the dead of summer, but it was really turbulent, I was bouncing around all over the place, out of control, I couldn’t stop myself… And then I hit. And… All I remember from that is pain.”

Benny looked down at the desk, tapping his fingers against the surface softly.

“But I’m fine now! Really.” Benny gave him a look. “Seriously, Benny! I’m fine.”

“If you say so-”

“I do,”

“-It’s not like you have a horrible track record of saying you’re okay when you’re not.”

Bart laughed. “I promise, Benny, I’m fine.” 

“Don’t you dare push yourself too hard,” Benny warned.

“Okay  _ Dad _ ,” Bart grinned then stood up. “I gotta run back to the kitchen though, I said I’d be back soon.”

Benny nodded his farewell as the red-winged angel left the office and returned to his work. Back in Gadreel’s room, the purple-winged angel was growing bored. He had nothing to do but gnaw on the “bedframe”, which was great and all, but he wanted something to do. At least the ring would train him to exhaustion. He crept to the door and poked his head out. The hallway was empty. As he crawled on all fours down the hallway towards the stairs, his attention was caught by a door. This door was one he hadn’t opened - most of them, he had. Except for the ones that reeked of illness. He didn’t want to warn sick angels from attacking him. They were weak enough as they were.

With a cautious look around himself to ensure nobody was watching, Gadreel stretched up to open the door. He came face to face with a bunch of shelves. He frowned and stood up, ruffling through the shelves. He pulled out a thing with buttons and twisty things on it. He pushed one of the buttons and hopped slightly as a thing popped out. He poked at it and pushed it back down, staring in amazement and wonder as it clicked and vanished. He pushed the button again and the thing reappeared. His mouth dropped open and he repeated this action. What  _ was _ this thing?

He kept opening and closing the thing, pressing different buttons. A smile began to take over his face as he entertained himself with the thing. He was so absorbed by it that he didn’t notice the footsteps approaching him and he jumped as Benny moved the door, shoving the thing back on the shelf with wide eyes, trying to hide the fact that he’d been messing with it. How would Benny react?

The human didn’t seem angry - more amused. He shooed Gadreel back to his room, promising food soon, and left him reeling.

Why hadn’t he been punished? Benny had always seemed upset when he’d gotten out of the room.

Gadreel uneasily watched the door until Benny returned. At the sound of the door opening, he scrambled to hide in his corner and peered out from under the bed. Benny was holding more than usual, more than just the drink, which only increased Gadreel’s nervousness. Was he finally going to reprimand him for acting out?

"Gadreel, I have your food," Benny spoke softly. He knew the angel didn't like it when he did that, but he'd also looked so terrified at being caught earlier that he didn't want to risk spooking him. "And some stuff for you. Come take the drink and then I'll give you the other stuff after."

After a few moments, Gadreel's head became visible from behind the bed, only showing from his eyes up. Benny put his other things down and stepped closer to give the angel his meal. Per usual, Gadreel growled, but he also flinched back, what was left of his notched ears laying flat, eyes narrowed, wings puffed - Wait a second. Benny had seen this type of body language before. 

Gadreel wasn't angry or aggressive. 

He was scared.

Benny felt like hitting himself.  _ How _ could he have been so  _ blind _ !? Thinking about it now, it was so obvious! The growling, the flinching, his lashing out and scratching Benny, that was all signs of fear and defensiveness. 

This revelation suddenly made everything so much easier. Yeah, there were behavioral issues he would have to address with the attacking angels, but Gadreel was just  _ scared _ . Benny could deal with scared, he knew scared. How could he have let his knowledge of knowing Gadreel had been a ring fighter and his bias cloud his judgement, make him think the angel was violent? Sure, he probably was, but he was also likely terrified. He'd been ripped away from everything he knew, taken to this new place where he wasn't allowed to do the one thing he knew, and he was surrounded by all new people he didn't know. Of course he would be defensive. 

The patter of the cup rolling out from under the bed interrupted his thoughts. Benny glanced down to see Gadreel's eyes staring at him from under the bed, wide and reflecting light, as always. He wasn't growling, for once, but that could have been because Benny hadn't moved yet. Sure enough, his eyes narrowed as Benny bent down to pick the cup up. He could easily see a confused frown in the way they scrunched and tipped when Benny sat down on the floor, cross-legged. 

"I have a few things for you, Gadreel," Benny told him. "Would you like to come see what they are?"

There was no response save for a low rumble at the sound of Benny's voice. Gadreel made no move to come out. 

"You don't have to, of course, not if you don't want to. I won't force you, I just want to show you what I got. I think you'll like them, but I'm not sure." Benny tried to make his body language as open as possible. He knew body language was huge for angels - angel-to-angel it was ears and wings mostly, but as Benny didn't have those traits, he had to settle with what he had. He wasn't sure how much of what he was saying Gadreel actually understood - maybe the angel only knew fighting commands and everything else was gibberish. 

It took a few minutes of Benny sitting there, not looking at Gadreel except for the occasional glance, for the angel to creep out from under the bed. His ears were flattened and he stopped just out of the crevice he'd shoved himself into and was clearly ready to bolt at a moment's notice. 

Benny turned away from Gadreel as he grabbed the first thing - a cup of applesauce. He was planning on introducing the angel to new foods and moving him to solids, but applesauce would likely be easier than his drinks with how thick they were. He peeled the top off, grabbed a plastic spoon, and leaned to set it in front of Gadreel. The angel cringed away from him, only relaxing when Benny moved away and sat like normal. He stared at the applesauce cup, confusion evident, then looked up at Benny. He was quite expressive and right now, it was clear he was asking Benny  _ what is this _ ?

"That's applesauce. It's food. It's soft enough that you can eat it without hurting your jaw even more."

Gadreel looked down at the small cup and his lips lifted in a silent snarl, baring his fangs. Light glinted off the metal replacements. In a quick movement, he hit it away, both of them watching as the cup flew through the air and hit the wall, splattering applesauce everywhere. Benny sighed. He’d have to clean that up later.

At his sigh, Gadreel’s head swivelled to him again. His eyes tracked over Benny’s face, reading his expression before the human returned his gaze to the angel and those attentive blue eyes dropped again, looking at Benny’s neck or chest again.

“I’m not mad at you,” Benny told him. Gadreel didn’t seem to react - but did he understand? “You’re not in trouble, Gadreel. I’m just… Look, I know you’re scared, but… Can you - I have something else for you. If you end up hitting it, it’s just gonna bounce off,”

Benny truly wasn’t mad about the applesauce. Disappointed, perhaps, but they could work on new foods later. So long as Gadreel was getting nutrition, he supposed it didn’t matter how. 

Benny watched as Gadreel’s eyes narrowed, then a confused frown and head-tilt took over as he saw the ball he’d brought. It was small and red and Gadreel was very obviously confused. He didn’t seem to know what it was. Benny sat the ball on the ground and tapped it towards Gadreel, who shuffled back away from it as it rolled to his feet then glanced at Benny.

“It’s a ball. A toy. Hit it, like I did,”

Gadreel looked at the ball then reached out and gave it a very cautious, very light tap. It hardly rolled a little. He hit it somewhat harder and it rolled farther. Benny noticed that the blanket strips had disappeared.

“Hey, where are all the blanket strips?” He asked. Gadreel glanced at Benny with a small frown. He regarded him for a few seconds before returning to the ball. Benny looked at Gadreel’s corner thing - pretty obviously a nest - as he was absorbed in watching the ball roll, reaching out and patting it again. He got up to investigate - slowly, so he didn’t startle Gadreel - and went over to the nest. It looked comfortable, padded with the missing blanket strips and a pillow.

Benny realized he should have understood what the blanket strips were for. He’d dealt with nesting angels before and Gadreel was likely just trying to make himself a place to feel comfortable and safe. He had, almost immediately, gravitated to the dark confines of under the bed and seemingly had decided that it was safe there - this nesting behavior would just expand that and give him more room to move around.

A thump caught his attention and he turned to see Gadreel tussling with the ball. It escaped his grasp and bounced away and the angel crouched then pounced on it again. Benny smiled. He looked like a cat. It was good to see him let loose. He let out a laugh as Gadreel bolted past him after the ball, bumping into his legs and causing him to stumble. The angel paused immediately at the hit and turned a fearful gaze to Benny - now that he knew why he was behaving the way he was, it was much easier to identify his expressions. Benny smiled gently at him. 

“It’s fine,” He told Gadreel. “You keep playing.”

Gadreel didn’t seem to want to do this. Ears flattened, he meekly tapped the ball back to Benny and slunk under the bed again. 

“It’s yours to keep,” Benny told him. “You can play with it whenever you want.” And he sat back down, cross-legged again - it was the least threatening position he could think of - and rolled the ball under the bed. It rolled back out again and bumped his knee lightly. “Are you trying to play or do you not want it? Make it hit the wall if you don’t want it.”

He rolled the ball back under the bed and, after a few moments, it slowly came out to tap his knee again. Benny huffed in amusement and sent the ball rolling. After a few more repeats of this, Gadreel seemed to grow a bit more courageous and confident with it and hit the ball a bit harder. The angel was completely silent, none of the growling or hissing that Benny had gotten used to. 

Benny hit the ball a bit harder than he meant to and it went bouncing under the bed, Gadreel making a surprised squeak when it hit him. After a few moments, it came back out, bouncing lightly. It was somewhat inaccurate and Benny had to lean over to get to it. At some point, he noticed that Gadreel was beginning to creep out from under the bed again. A faint smile - hardly there - was lingering on his face as he hit the ball back and forth with Benny. For the first time ever, he seemed slightly relaxed. 

On one of Benny’s hits, he hit the ball just a little off-target so it went past Gadreel. His ears pricked as it bounced past him, cat-like pupils widening in interest. Benny watched as the angel twisted to watch the ball - turning his back fully to Benny for possibly the first time - then pounced on it, tussling with it before batting it back to Benny, the smile on his face growing. 

This all paused the moment a knock came on the door. Like a switch had been flipped, Gadreel had gone from open and excited and playful to scared again as he dove under the bed in a purple streak, snarling and growling again. It was disheartening, seeing his sudden shift back into his former behavior. He'd been doing so well. 

"Crap," Benny muttered as he stood up, movement followed by more growling. He opened the door to see Adina and the growls got louder. He slipped through the door and closed it behind his back. "What is it?"

"Abby's been asking for you," She told him. "We've been telling him that you're busy but he won't listen."

"Alright, give me just a second-" He opened the door a crack, enough so that Gadreel couldn't see Adina. "Gadreel, I have to go for now. I'll be back, okay? If you want to, try the applesauce and you can play with the ball if you want."

He got a hiss in reply and the door clicked shut. Benny sighed as he and Adina headed to Abner's room. They knocked and entered, the young angel lying limply on his bed, Elijah gently coming a hand through his sweaty hair. 

"Hey, Abner, Adina says you've been asking for me?"

Abner didn't reply, simply moaning softly and reaching out for Benny. The lanky teenager whined as Benny smoothed his hair from his face, frowning when he felt how hot Abner was. 

"Hey, can one of you go grab a thermometer from one of the closets?" He asked and pulled out his phone, turning on the flashlight. "Abner open your mouth and stick out your tongue please."

Abner obeyed and Benny shined his light in his mouth, grimacing at what he saw. He sat back and patted Abner's shoulder in a signal for the angel to close his mouth. He waited for Adina to return with the thermometer, accepted it and gently pushed it in Abner's mouth. 

109.

"Lovely," He sighed, getting up. "Alright, Abby, I'll be back in a few seconds. You try to go to sleep, okay?"

"Feel sick," Abner whimpered. 

"I know buddy, I know. I'll bring you something to help you feel better soon, alright?"

Abner nodded slowly and Benny pulled the blanket over his shoulder and up to his chin. He then stood up, patting Abner's shoulder and ushering Adina and Elijah out. 

"What is it?" Adina asked. 

"My best guess at the moment is that he caught whatever Josiah's got," Benny sighed. "Meaning it's contagious. Meaning I'm not going to have you guys around him and I need to move Josiah to the other bed with Abner to keep Bart from catching it."

“Great,” Elijah groaned. “Do you want us to stay in our room for a while in case we did get it?”

Benny sighed. “It would probably be best if you did. I don’t want to ask it of you, but…”

“It’s fine,” Adina replied. “We’ll go now, unless you want something from us?”

“No, I think I’ve got it,” Benny watched as the two nodded then moved to their shared room, Adina moving automatically to help support Elijah, who wasn’t using his crutch today and his balance was suffering. He then went back into Abner’s room to find that the ill fledgling had fallen asleep. He nodded to himself and moved to Josiah’s room. The deaf angel was laying across his bed, arm slung over his eyes. He wasn’t asleep though, but he looked like he wanted to be.

Benny tapped his foot and he moved his arm. Josiah looked at him, eyes bright with fever but dark with fatigue.

“I’m moving you into Abner’s room,” Benny signed. “He caught whatever you’ve got and I’m trying to minimize the spread of it.”

Josiah groaned as he rolled off the bed and almost fell. Benny quickly caught him and he leaned heavily against him, head hanging. Benny easily supported him - angels were quite light, besides their wings - and he frowned as he felt the heat radiating off of him.

“Let’s get you to Abner’s room, then we’ll see what I can do for you,” He murmured, ignoring the fact that Josiah couldn’t hear him. He hauled the sick angel down the hallway, practically carrying him, and gently set him down on the empty bed in Abner’s room. After checking his temperature - 108.3 - Benny went to go get something for the angels to eat.

“Benny, what are you doing in here?” Elizabeth fussed, whipping a towel toward him. “Shoo.”

“I’m just getting something for Abner and Josiah,” Benny sidestepped the towel with a grin. “I  _ am _ your boss, you know.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Get what you need and go,” She laughed. Benny nudged her and went to wash his hands. After tracking down a freshly-made pot of soup and getting a total of six bowls on a tray - he needed to eat something, as did Abner, Josiah, Adina, and Elijah. The last bowl was for Gadreel. He wasn’t sure if the angel would want it, but he could try. He might like something warm. 

Benny stopped by Adina and Elijah’s first and the angels accepted their soup with grateful smiles - they hadn’t eaten lunch. Benny then went to Abner and Josiah. Abner hadn’t woken up but Josiah was sitting up and accepted the soup with shaky hands. He ate it slowly as Benny set to waking Abner up. He’d not been eating much - he’d had no appetite as he’d gone through mint-withdrawal. Thinking about it, Benny should have realized something was wrong with Abner. Most angels didn’t feel so bad when going through withdrawals and they never lasted so long. Abner had likely been sick for days, if not longer. Benny felt terrible - he’d been so occupied with worrying about Gadreel that he’d not realized something was wrong with Abner - and even with Gadreel, he’d been making mistakes. 

Abner eventually sat up but didn’t seem to want to take the bowl offered to him. Benny sat next to him and tried to prompt him into eating and ended up hand-feeding the angel. Only about halfway through the bowl, Abner turned his head and refused to eat any more. 

“Alright,” Benny sighed then signed to Josiah, “Are you finished?”

Josiah simply nodded and Benny took his bowl from him. Neither angel had finished, unsurprisingly, and both seemed like they didn’t care to interact anymore, both curling up in their blankets. Benny ensured that the window was covered - to avoid light-induced headaches, which were fairly common in some angels - and slipped out, taking the bowls with him. He tested his and Gadreel’s, both of which had gone cold, and ran down to the kitchen to reheat them and put the half-emptied bowls to wash. 

Gadreel was pacing in his room. He was irritated, bored, cooped up… There was an itch under his skin that didn’t seem to want to go away. He wanted to  _ move _ , get out of this room. Just then, a knock sounded against the door and he defensively crouched down, fangs bared as a growl rumbled in his throat.

It was just Benny, coming in with something unfamiliar. Gadreel skittered under the bed at the sight of something new and watched as Benny spoke, much of which Gadreel didn’t really understand, nor did he care to try to decipher. He didn’t need to know much human-language. Just his orders. Everything else was trivial.

Gadreel’s nose twitched as he smelled something. It was… Not strong and not unpleasant. But unfamiliar. Unfamiliar was bad.

“Gadreel-” Benny said his name. This meant pay attention. “It’s soup. Food. Please don’t throw it at the wall. I have some too and I’ll eat mine with you, okay?”

Gadreel watched as Benny leaned forward and placed one of the bowls of “soup” near the corner of the bed. He kept the other for himself. Gadreel watched as he sat down again, similar to how he’d been when he brought in the “applesauce” and “ball”. He seemed to wait for Gadreel to come out, but the angel made no move and the human sighed.

“Well, I’m going to eat mine because I haven’t eaten today. If you want yours, come out and get it.” Benny picked up some kind of utensil and began using it to eat the soup. Gadreel frowned. He’d never seen that thing before. Curiosity gnawed at him and he crawled to the edge of the bed enough to poke his head and shoulders out, then followed up with the rest of himself, sitting hunched and watching Benny in confusion. What was that thing?

“Do you - This is a spoon,” Benny told Gadreel, holding it so the angel could see. “You have one in your bowl. It’s used to eat soup.”

Gadreel squinted at Benny but supposed he couldn’t judge. He’d never heard of “soup” before. He tentatively crawled forward to the bowl and edged the “spoon” out, watching as it dripped. He started at the thing then lifted it to his mouth to chew on it. Whatever was on it - the remnants of soup - tasted good, but he wanted to gnaw a little and this seemed sufficient. 

Benny watched as Gadreel chewed on the spoon. He didn't seem to care about the soup and just wanted to gnaw - he'd seen gnawing in angels before, usually fledglings. "Do you want to eat the soup?" He asked. "You need to eat."

Gadreel looked at Benny just as the human ate another spoonful of his own soup. He tipped his head and then mimicked Benny, holding the spoon and trying to scoop up soup. When he managed to get the spoon to his mouth, his eyes widened. It was good yes, but there was so much flavor and it was  _ hot _ and it was -

Too much. It was too much too much too much and Gadreel dropped the spoon and bolted into his nest, overwhelmed. The nest was bright and colorful and it only served to add to his overstimulation and he covered his head with his wings as he quietly, unknowingly whimpered. 

Benny sat in shock as Gadreel fled. Did he not like the soup and that’s why he ran off? Or… He’d probably been fed kibble his whole life. That stuff was so bland. And then he’d refused to have any other flavor but the strawberry shakes while his jaw was wired - the soup was probably too much for him to handle, too much flavor. How did Benny not think of that?

“Gadreel, are you okay?” He asked softly. He heard Gadreel whimpering and got up to see him huddled up in a little ball, covering his eyes. His ears were laying flat as they could, the gold ring in one swinging slightly. Based on what Jody had said, they used the rings as identification. Benny wanted to take it out, but he wasn’t sure how Gadreel would react and didn’t want to push him too far. He was already high-strung enough as it was. 

“I’m gonna take the soup with me, okay? I’m sorry it was too much for you. I’ll bring you something else later, something you might prefer, okay?”

Benny only got more quiet whimpers as a reply. Looking into the nest, Gadreel had burrowed his way under blanket shreds and was covering himself with his wings. His head was still visible and Benny could see him covering his ears now, eyes squeezed shut as he shook. His wings started to open and flap as he started keening pathetically. 

"Gadreel, take a deep breath," Benny told the angel firmly. "Take a deep breath and listen to me, understand?"

Gadreel nodded stiffly. Good. He was responsive. 

"You're going to be okay. Just breathe and focus on me. When you feel like you can, reach up and tap my hand. It's on the edge of the nest."

It took Gadreel multiple minutes to calm down and Benny had to repeat himself before the angel tapped his hand. He seemed jittery and uncomfortable. 

"Do you want the ball?" Benny asked. Gadreel glared at him but didn't seem to have the energy to growl at him. "I'm going to roll it under the bed. Then I'm going to take the soup and leave you alone unless you want me to stay,"

Gadreel didn't respond. Benny picked the things up, sent the ball under the bed, and left. In his notes for Gadreel's file, he wrote,

_ Overstimulated easily. Nervous. Scared.  _


End file.
